300 Park Avenue - Giselle Tran
Guadalupe slaps the banks
of nylon shelter and grimy denim
begging to escape their crypt,
then a grease-stained guitar struts
out a dive, fisting two dollars
and a cigarette, a yellow haze
drifting, settling overhead.
A bottle of diet Coke explodes
in the fourteenth floor kitchen
without confession as rejected
thirteen chants March for the middle
but avoid the bridge, deluding
the building of backwards doors
and lukewarm takeout.
But still…
Concrete veins travel through
fields of red clay, leaves, and gray
stretching out all around, buried in soft brown
ridges jutting up along the horizon
fading in shades of gold instead of fire,
protecting, imprisoning us together.
