“Poetry is local,” my friend from St. Paul
once told me. I was living
in Portland at the time, rising
at 5 a.m. for a coffee shop job.
I didn’t know if I knew any Multnomah people
but there were always so many strangers,
workers to share silence with
on the pre-dawn bus. The chill
in the air, February,
what frost smelled like
bending close to an iced windshield.
To be young and type lines
on a discarded typewriter in my brother’s
dim room was my late
afternoon occupation. I never
went to bed early enough
and abhorred toast,
all breakfast foods.
My boss made one strangely
benign innuendo. Power:
I knew I was sexier,
knew my allusions
to the previous night’s antics
kept the customers entertained.
People often asked me if I was
a native of that city.
I’ve always hated that expression.
The Local
March 18, 2021
This poem “The Local” originally appeared in Emerging Scholars, Redux Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 242 (2020): 100.
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