after “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens
XIV
in
chinese the number 14 is unlucky, as ever, be
cause it sounds like shi si, “certain death.” i leave
this behind last summer, in hong kong, in be
tween elevator tones and bus routes shaped like
clovers on roundabouts under the egg yolk sun.
i am not an auspicious girl, by which i mean i am
trying, by which i mean my heel is pushed into
gravel a number of times before it knows where it
is. i leave my hat in a bike shop on richmond
street. i am winning at walking away.
this much i believe: you only know a place
if you litter it with lucky charms, a perfect
aspiration, lover girl i leave in handbags and
capital, drive private shop online and as much i
will eat the whole world if it keeps me breathing.
you, too, would take flight in such a way—would
chick flick / glitter / wish the air turned artificial and
cleared the river of its indecipherable cause. could
leave my oils on plastic, on polyester, on corpor
ation and retail and gas and last fall, would love
my footstep as much as the dirt it soils. & yet,
i am not the one who comes away.
i taste the honeyed flavor of home cooked food
and dress like i am seventeen. fix my own
clothes, am humming in the bay window, see the
sun from the footpath, bike the black water of leith
til the night falls away. thrift my effects and share
my causes, shop small and take the slow train,
support libraries and third spaces and museums,
will not let the certain death of my indifference
etch a city away, has made my life so beautiful
and so big. you cannot know where you are.
you owe a place its own inertia, this stunning
untouchability required to soften the earth as we
walk it. in chinese the number 14 is unlucky, as
ever, be cause si means “death;” and also, the
four cardinal directions, four winds that touch the
corners of the earth, knock on neighbors’ doors,
bottle laughter, keep moments and not things. not
even superstition is sure of itself. in los angeles it
is so bright, and the cars turn lucid, inescapable
rhythms, and i pay myself to this city because
maybe i think it counts for something. but keeping
a place with you is not the same as disappearing.
it moves, it follows, turns public infrastructure to
garden, to bowl. all that is borrowed returns
home—like this city, like small pieces of wonder
to keep alive / too, so much more to love and
leave behind. all these footsteps i am so lucky to
take and just after.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45236/thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-a-blackbird
https://friendsoftheearth.uk/climate/live-sustainably-how-be-conscious-consumer
https://www.expatica.com/uk/living/household/sustainable-living-uk-467591/
https://www.visitbritain.com/en/things-to-do/sustainability
https://sdgs.un.org/goals
https://www.nodatacenterssgvcoalition.org/
