The Traveler’s Vade Mecum, Line #346: ‘The Banks Have Begun to Contract’

← v12n2, Fall 2013

One bridge, a hare’s leap over the Monongahela—

One, a hawk’s low swoop along the Allegheny—

One a Hot Metal truss, one a strung bow,

three Sisters suspended and a terminus at Liberty—

If you count the bridges of this city, you lose count.

This was not the original plan. A city should grow

like a muscle. We flex until the small fibers rip,

bathe in the amino acid’s flood. Only a child

tries to staple a tear in the lifting shoulder of God.

place urban-life body

Sandra Beasley

Sandra Beasley won the 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize for her book Theories of Falling (New Issues, 2008), selected by Marie Howe. Her poems have been featured in Verse Daily and Best New Poets (Samovar, 2005) and in journals such as SLATE, The Believer, 32 Poems, and Barrow Street. Awards for her work include the 2006 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize from Passages North and fellowships to the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Millay Colony. She lives in Washington, D.C., where she serves on the editorial staff of The American Scholar .