Barking At Crows & N. Portland
By Mimi German
Barking At Crows
was looking for a trumpet player to blow the muted notes of a poem found a dog
barking at crows instead and a forest of ponderosa pines and a few roundabouts
that went round and round dusty air pierces the breath two old indians sit in
the burned out gas station sucking down the heat across the street the river flows
a wild song it’s too hot for the birds john deere bales row after row of misery
beneath the house on the hill that stalks to the desert sail the trailers a rusted
red fender feathers the narrows between road and crooked horizon and all the
land is for sale the road curves like love horses eat at the trough unbridled
and lazy the foraging heat splinters like a dry fence post a hay bale of hell if you
don’t like how the willows weep
N. Portland
pocked like teenage skin the streets are tired creped and worn beneath the color of sky is grey is grey is grey is grey graffiti on old holman’s funeral home is painted over with the words no one’s home i know this street it lines the broken chunks of alleyways that lead
to the gossamer weeds near the heart sap gasps through a portal a branch heaves then breaks the rumble of pallets hull in the chipper an aria of morning joseph tells me he’s going to jump the bridge today like every other day the wheels on his cart catch the sidewalk hitch the cloistered sun lurches the bow hustling toward the sea
Mimi German is a poet and poetry activist who can be found advocating for unhoused people on the streets, reading her poetry as City Council testimony, or at times, in the wilderness of Oregon near Steens Mountain. Her first chapbook of poetry, Beneath the Gravel Weight of Stars, based on her life working with houseless people, came out on March 15, 2022.