Tuesday, September 28, 2021

Tuesday poem #443 : Carla Harris : my only options

 

hostage on the bus I pluck poems from street debris
the road ripples in each driver’s wake

concrete waves lap against each tire

beating for the pavement’s heart

ba-bum ba-bum, ba-bum ba-bum

I am tossed in clusters of passengers, unbound

and abandoned, eyes locked as I sway, the empty body

is a container
, the container is whistling

from the smallest crack in the frame to rattle

like grandpa’s mint tin by the drivers seat

permission to open the container

to take and to close with breathless aspirations

to not disrupt the eye of any other controller

a rider who watches you or a driver, stiff

at the wheel I whisk past

to pour out on the street

assembling on my feet
the
heels slam in combat

I storm sidewalks drilling forward

anger is one remaining act of power

a firm walk isn’t running away, a pulsing

stride never looks uncertain, it implies

focus, strong intentions are a costume

a cloak which makes men stop noticing you

repulsed by femme faces which focus or scowl

they skip stiff women for the sweet genteel

women who bruise like softened fruit.

Brisk and severe, I walk going nowhere.

I walk to hear my anger hit the pavement, to snap

twigs and clear paths I race to pluck each street

out of another victims future poems

my holed soles hide unnoticed, until rain starts to fall

and quicker than the drops can soak into my canvass shoes,

my soles already draw standing water from the street.

 

  

 

Carla Harris is a disabled queer writer, performer and interdisciplinary artist from Treaty 4 territory, living in Regina Saskatchewan. She is currently working on her first collection of creative nonfiction poetry.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

 

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