by Joanne Esser
Below street level
I look up at familiar
buildings that have grown
Four stories, windows
dark, cool inside, concealing
business of the city.
Along the edges,
patches of red, orange, yellow
with secret black hearts.
Painted blossoms rise
enormous above real ones
as if they’re sisters.
Sparrows hop in wild
grasses under graffiti:
morse code messages.
Light rail tracks extend
a line diminishing to
invisible convergence.
Dead squirrel lies curled up
as if he’s fallen asleep
next to a roaring train.
Bridge after gray bridge
arc over me like rainbows
drained of all their shine.
From the lake to the
river, faces change: first white,
then tan, then brown, then black.
In overpass shade,
men in worn-out jeans and caps
have nowhere to go.
White veil, white gown, a
woman hovers on the bridge above
like the Virgin Mary.
Red tricycle lies
sideways on the dusty slope.
Where did the child go?
To boys in t-shirts
who dribble a basketball,
the day is hilarious.
Street-talk: longing
camouflaged by bravado,
all of it in motion.
Paved trail hums the city’s song:
whoosh of tires and wind,
ripened by spring.
Joanne Esser is the author of the poetry collections All We Can Do Is Name Them, (Fernwood Press, October 2024), Humming At The Dinner Table, and the chapbook I Have Always Wanted Lightning. Her new book of poems, Nothing Is Stationary, will be released by Holy Cow! Press in June 2026. Recent work appears in Great Lakes Review, Humana Obscura, I-70 Review, Dunes Review, The Main Street Rag, and Orca, among other journals. She earned an MFA from Hamline University and has been a teacher of young children for over forty years. She lives with her husband in Eagan, Minnesota.