by Steph Green

Revision

Walking out

On the streets broken with overgrown shrubbery

That crept in on us like twisted fingers;

She said, this is the place where she used to fish for tadpoles.

She said she wished the stars would shine,

Tonight was a night of change.

I said, light pollution.

I said, streetlights, car lights, city lights,

Strobe lights have dirtied up the sky.

She said, "Keep cool, keep chill,

Keep things low low."

Loosely constructed sentences

Would fly from her mouth like sparks from an empty lighter.

And later I think, funny, that's how I remember her:

Framed by the undelivered promise of fire.

She said, "Do you remember the gift of fire from the gods to ancient Rome?

Do you remember the bird pecking out the traitor's liver by day, and it

growing back each night?"

She was always the goddess of discord.

She was always first in line.

She said, "It's been too long that I've thought things so unimportant.

From now on I will think every little thing is an issue of magnitude."

She said, "It's time for change. It's time to make a change change. It's time

for revision."

And I see her walking in the city.

And under cotton her smooth stomach is luminous,

Shining like an opalescent pearl.

She is still speaking to me about the importance of perception.

She says, "Now the yellow lines running down the street are poetry,

Now even you are some artful magnificence."

Her lips are boiling water,

The way her mother used to prepare pasta,

Oil at the top.

And once her brother threw in a match

This is the only time I've seen water burn.

And later I think, funny that's how I remember her:

All glowing and framed by impossible flame.

And her breath is loud now like a railroad engine,

Like a hot steam engine and I see the water on her breath.

She is speaking deep now,

I am standing inside a huge ringing bell,

And that is her voice.

She says, "The streets are poetry now."

She coughs, her voice all gravel and concrete.

She says her mother was two broken wrists in a sling:

All frowns and arms perpetually crossed.

I remember her mother in skin-tone spandex:

Thighs like chunky peanut butter cased in cellophane,

Arms bare exposing veins like blue tendrils of watercolor on recycled paper.

But I am listening again and she says, "This is not me."

She says, "I am getting out of here.

I am driving fast fast, in the passing lane the whole way.

I am going to the city.

I am going to the sleepless city to surround myself with 65 miles per hour."

She says, "This is the first road of one million because I am leaving."

She says, "All the world is open to me because the streets are poetry now."