Non-place
You drive down a street
named for a long-leveled hill
it meanders in superstitious curves.
You pass the new condos
stone facades glued to plywood
form cloisters of anonymous neighbors.
The road pierces a thrombotic turnpike
and housing and shopping circuits
iterate to the horizon.
You keep your eyes fixed ahead of you
but the plots peel away
revealing a hungry maw.
The city swallows the turnpike
and heaves census tracts and industrial zones
auto lots high rises office parks
places that could be anywhere and are no-where.
Places rent from the land
with frayed seams that unravel
into condemned buildings and encampments.
Neighborhoods are overtaken
by non-places that simulate dwelling
not homes, but monuments to land speculation.
The city lurches and replicates
grafts veins over indigent precincts
and sprouts fangs for birds and vagrants.
The city is haunted
by liminal shades that frequent
the empty bus station or unclaimed lot
their whispers, lost in the dull roar
tell what these places were or could have been.
But at the end of the seared concrete
obscured by lattice or chain link
beneath the piles of refuse
and detritus of things not remembered
from the loamy soil there shoots dandelions
and other things that grow untended.
JESSICA HENDERSON
Jessica Henderson grew up in Los Angeles and currently lives in Boston. Besides poetry, she likes painting, reading, and dancing.