Y Bridge Poem

Carl Boon

The weeds along the Little Cuyahoga
catch the falling sometimes,
women and men who leave
their Christmas trees up
till March so they can watch them die.

Or sometimes a child
who had no money for shoes, no cause
to watch the teacher’s hands move
across the chalkboard,
spelling cities, futures.

In Akron and Kenmore, Barberton
and south to Black Walnut,
the machine shops turn away
the broken-faced, the barbers
who’ve shuttered their shops,

the bowlers who’ve forgotten
how to lift their arms. This morning
a woman landed face-down
in Elizabeth Park, and just last month
a man they mistook for a pile of rags.

A boy on a bicycle said his mouth
was twitching, but it could’ve been
the wind, the need for words
that travels past death, that wishes
a scream were enough.

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Carl Boon is the author of Places & Names, coming from The Nasiona Press, San Francisco, later this year.