CITY-GIRL
I used to be a city
but now I’m a girl.
It took a long time
for me to change
from a city to a girl
and the in-between
stages were kind of stupid
but it feels good having
arms and feet instead of
buildings and stoplights.
It feels good being my
own aldermen and my
own slumlord.
It feels good being a girl
and if you look close
you can tell I was a city
before. Inside me there
are city things going on.
Inside me it’s still loud.
Inside me there is a woman
who loves her dog so much
that she filmed it sleeping
and projected it thirty feet
high onto the side of her
apartment building.
A dog-eye twitches and a
whole window seems to move.
The building is dog-breathing.
Last week there was a nightmare
and the whole sidewalk broke in
half the long way in front of the building.
Birds took turns landing on the break
looking for bugs and they found a few.
Pedestrians were having trouble
and so the woman came out
and helped them push their babies
and she could feel the babies
pushing back.
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Russ Woods lives in Chicago, where he co-edits Red Lightbulbs. He has
had or will have poetry in Pank, Trnsfr, and apt. His first chapbook,
Tiny People will be out from NAP in January 2012. There is more where
this came from at solarflareshavebeenknowntocauseheartache.com