Urban Planning by Kim Goldberg

from RED ZONE (2009, Pig Squash Press)

 

Urban Planning

Kim Goldberg

Train tracks scrape past the sun-hammered miners’

shacks left over from the last

century. The front side is tarted up

as the Historic Old Quarter. But the backside

holds the story. Just ask the crumbling sunflower

sentries guarding the ass-end

of the Women’s Center. Or the weather-stripped

shiplap on the Bride’s Closet next door

luffing like a beaten flag while some gunk

the color of old blood drips

from a rusty pipe. I know this stuff

because I am now at a sufficiently advanced

stage in my daily rail-walking to support

a head-up gaze at my surroundings without

tumbling into the thorns. Beyond the

bridal store the shaling Occidental

Hotel and Bar prevails like an asylum

for the criminally insane. While across the

tracks a torn quilt pocked with bodily

stains lies splayed on a weedy patch

behind the Thrift Shop – a cardboard box 

nightstand totters beside. She will

sleep here again tonight

unless chance finds her at the copshop on

the corner or perhaps in the bed

of someone she meets in the Oxy. And if he’s

not too bad, maybe they’ll get hitched

and pay a visit to the Bride’s Closet (except

that’s likely where her problems started – it’s all so

cyclotronic). He’ll probably keep

spending his nights at the Oxy, coming home

mean, talking fist-speak, till she ducks

out, goes to the Women’s Center, which

will be closed due to funding cuts, so she’ll do

some dumpster diving in the donation box

outside the Thrift Shop till she finds another quilt

and a spot to lie.

*  *  *

RED ZONE is available at People's Co-op Bookstore in Vancouver and other independent bookstores or directly from the publisher, Pig Squash Press. Email goldberg@ncf.ca for details.