Ryan Di Francesco
All the Damn Way
the city
cracks open
another block
of abandoned
houses
beating faces
dragged
by suits
to the fence
of the jobless
reaching out
to hold time
in the broken
clouded
trail of strangers
passing by
groomed
for tomorrow
wishing all
a nice day
until it’s not
until you’re
drunk at noon
dropping
groceries
in a long line
with your clothes
covered in paint
complaining
about all this rain
about how it’s got
to warm up
eventually
one would think
thinking about
how to end it all
while children
continue to
chuck rocks
into the garden
screaming
all the damn way
until recess
is over
and the one flower left
is picked
and will never have
been missed
Fields
people in the field
down the street
from my apartment
squat through
the winter
until bulldozers
come in the spring
with a new navy wave
rushing
across their
bodies
scattering
leftovers from
the big dream
with those indomitable
black boots
dragging
desperation
hands
seized up
rising
then falling
like fists
in tents
bleeding
in the rain
scrubbing scars
from the city’s
trepanation
but they return
sitting at the edges
in summer
finches
in their nests
waiting
under the mired sky
with nowhere
left to go
with buildings always
punching down
with no one speaking
to each other
as the sun dirties
its face
along the rotten curb
punching up
with madness
made violent
by brushing
shoulders
with strangers
in line
departing
to never
reappear
so goddamn tired
You Don’t Have to Go to the Movies to See the Horror
—THE FUTURE IS HERE
reads the sign
hanging from a dead pine tree
beside fenced-in, boarded windows
with no view—
born of a nineteenth-century vision,
now stinking of twenty-first century rot
where jobless buddhas
slump on a bench
talking about
the last night on earth
and how we’re all ready
and not ready enough
for the foreclosure notices
and the brightness of horror
no one notices
on a kind day.
Like insects
circling a wine bottle.
Like a pair of shoes
drooping from a wire.
Like one side of a mouth
waiting at the hospital
in the long line
growing—
madly
Ryan Di Francesco (he/him) is a neurodivergent Canadian writer and teacher. His writing has appeared in The Toronto Star and is published or forthcoming in Acta Victoriana, Pacific Review, Soliloquies Anthology, Pinhole Poetry, Shoegaze Literary, and elsewhere. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Shadow and Sax, an independent literary and arts press. His chapbooks include Mirage of Burning Things (Parlyaree Press), Skeleton Mine Disaster (Bottlecap Press), and The Paper Hound and Canadian Classic (Alien Buddha Press). A poetry collection is forthcoming from Ethel Zine & Micro Press. He was shortlisted for the Rhonda Gail Williford Poetry Prize.
“All the Damn Way” originally appeared in Bitter Melon Review
Banner Art:
Photo by Bruno Guerrero, Unsplash, 2022
