Certain nights
when the city yields
its shoulder,
just by happenstance
turning its back
for a distracted moment
as if to give its attention to something
about to burn,
there rises in me an instinct
to pour out my undernourished gratitude
as I pass the institutions,
as I pass the prescription green spaces,
as I pass the vaulted buildings that stand
as monuments
to the flimsy premise
that any human work could ever fill them.
This is the time I most feel the undertow
of my magnetic soul,
my fluid mantle
flexing toward its mirror in all people—
boxed away like jewels in the high rises,
spilt like seeds on every street.
We suck at one another’s ankles,
an unacknowledged hungry tide.
It’s not the feeling that overwhelms me;
it’s the suddenness.
What tectonic shift must have occurred?
Where are there mountains now
where once grazed peaceful beasts?
What will happen, finally,
when the city turns back to me
and finds my poles have switched?
–
Shannon Deep is an American living in Paris, France, whose fiction, poetry, personal essay, and other writings have appeared in Narratively, The Huffington Post, Thought Catalog, Grief Diaries, Shine Journal, Forbes, and elsewhere. The play Prospect High: Brooklyn (Smith & Krause), for which Shannon was a co-writer and dramaturg, was a Eugene O’Neill finalist.