Visual art by Renée Cohen
Hot pink and lonely amidst road
grime and weeds—a child’s
stuffed whale along the freeway,
tossed one day as a lesson
in regret and wonder. There now
under sun and rain and wind
and heightened by its candid
placement, like a lone shoe
in the gutter—some sign of life
lived. Like you and the veins
that scream along your arms
are alive in me.
You have no business being
here but you are, a shopping cart
in the woods, a stairway to nowhere.
You are a Styrofoam cup in the crook of a tree.
These hearts of ours have no bounds.
We are plastic bags that sail
from phone towers, hoping to
belong. And fools for ever wanting to.
And here we are with all these
things we’re bound to lose.
Our cities are studded with forgetfulness
and good intentions, like shoes laced
and strung from electric lines along
the alleyways of our rhinestone wishes.
Never to be worn again.
They kick our shins, make us look all the same.
Gulf Stream Magazine 