Andrew Vogel: “Revitalization Belt”
REVITALIZATION BELT
Marble halls doze on the heel
flak in their chambered throats.
Nobody tired, everybody yawning,
only echoes keep themselves busy.
Toothless frown row homes laugh
as the vacancies catcall my bypass.
Shop fronts spill clutter they’d kill to sell
off, as if anybody had the life to give.
Taxis scavenge past natty foragers
poking dividends off banks of trash.
Stairwells plumbed with spray paint,
bloat slow magistrates rake their paper.
Vials seed the gutters and clack in drains,
birds and vermin squat gardens gone feral.
Knife-eyed bar flies frisk every waystop
visitor with the most eloquent patter.
The guardian monuments abet their
sacrifice to every change of weather.
Sometimes a distant thought arrives
to traipse dry leaves thru the scrap lands,
and out in the night always the chance
a crowd parts and she’s still ignoring me.
Andrew Vogel‘s poems have appeared most recently in The Shore, Poetry East, Hunger Mountain, Crab Creek Review, Briar Cliff Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and Cider Press Review.