by Catherine McGuire
While downtown bleeds off
another few stores, and acid rain carves
red brick into glacial moraine,
garbage piling like erratics
on the city floor — show me vast
purple landscapes, pixel-perfect
plains — I want to touch them;
let them flow over me, 3-D.
Show me myself in blue green skin
cornrows dangling like whips;
show the world’s destruction, but
let me hope. Let me dream.
Feed me the hero, so much braver than I
yet down to earth — a pal, with inner grit
(like mine, I’m sure), atomic courage
blowing apart all snares and cunning.
Let me sit in gently rocking, cushioned seats
with a ton of buttered popcorn, quart of pop
my “real life” glowing, wall-sized before me.
Race, fight, love, win — while moving nothing more
than hand to mouth.
Catherine McGuire is a writer and artist with more than 120 poems published in venues such as The New Verse News, The Cape Rock, Green Fuse, The Quizzical Chair Anthology, The Smoking Poet, Portland Lights Anthology, Folio, Tapjoe and Adagio. She is currently assistant director at CALYX Press in Corvallis and will be co-leading a community college workshop, “Ready, Set, Submit!" in April.
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