once these fields
once these fields
By: Michelle Villanueva
sun beats these blistered streets
disease harsh steel we were
the day ignores our names
counting survive the sand
they are chisel strength beam
wire rebar desire glass
expand past girders grasp
concrete mere emptiness
stylus styled the noontime
while these tendons tighten
structures stretch beyond light
desolate ripening
pain along alleyways
shivering these our hope
too stone stark roads forgive
fitfully dust caked walls
reveal these tracts we feel
always the desert fumes
scraped sidewalk cast aside
bituminous streams stain
rubble bleak wisps fleeting
alone we seek the paths
Gives us piecemeal sensations of the fields once there through natural imagery (“tendons,” “ripening,” “streams”) describing the urban setting. The anti-syntax is off-putting, but that’s what the sensation is.