by Sharon Lynn Griffiths
The city is cinched by a concourse
of flowing light and vice,
held up by a rhinestone triangle
too hip to call itself a square, a clasp
above the navel of the known world.
Once, there was elegance, then innuendo, then
a descent into paths for the walking dead.
Once, there were haiku on marquees of dead theaters.
In a time of transition, they told you
to sort your fears into categories
if it helped to calm you, and to take
small, deliberate steps in the dark.
A church holds on with splintered fingers,
issues warnings to an evil generation. We must prepare
to sing in a difficult time, it says.
We must sing the glory of God in dry places.
Oh the city is a dark ride.
The steel rails in the Mine of Lost Souls
wind like Lethe underground,
and this is where you enter the Casa Macabre
through its whirling, buzzsaw teeth.
This must be the place.
So step up right up and take your chances,
learn to draw your face on, different every day.
Slide your feet into shoes as cruel
as the concrete they walk on
and believe that bones eventually obey
the shape of their container.
Someone must have set the snow-globe down too hard,
our shaky frame of reference is collapsing,
caught by the simple flick of a switch
igniting weak and pulsing bulbs that sketch
a desolate landscape on a canvas scrim.
This shot is taken just before it falls.
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