Blackbird an online journal of literature and the arts Spring 2008 Vol. 7 No. 1

POETRY

TERRI WITEK

Walking Angry in That City

I swing along like a snake’s last rattle,
glad to see windows buckling their bodices

and how, graffitied across piazzas,
each martyr’s name spells further torture.

If the shops all seem cacophonous and crass,
the churches are overly cool and swoony.

Oh, I’m in a right old lather,
so high on it I flail against even the hour’s color,

what painter after painter tries to touch
then drop into hats for drowsy boatmen.

By now, not yet apologetic but sailing
into aftermath, I pass a cat filleting

something vague and gray on the pavement
and then (at last) it is only hunger I too feel.