Calgary Martin

Mercy

Coney Island, NY

Look: the way the sun sets on Kings County
from the trestle of Smith/Ninth: burns up the city
until there is no city there: no
homes, nor trees, nor steeples. Just one
ancient molten lake a body
of water of fire, for miles.
The encroachment of callery pears in April,
spines curved, drooped over the primordial
streets, the scent of semen. Hoarding
daylight in their white petals.

Anything can be made beautiful. See:
how comely, the Atlantic,
after one termination point
or another: train station, job,
baby, etc. Laid beneath
a deepening sky
like the harmonious pairs
of a Rothko, blue
on blue, goddammit.
And when you run
into the waves
in your jersey skirt
and red-buttoned silk shirt
to stand with your back to the camera,
still holding your purse—how beguiling
the residual image will be to you, ten years on.

And you can, if you want, choose
to remember every shit night
in the city of your youth

just like this.

See?

For you and for the person you were,
mercy. Every train ride with your cheek crammed
against the window was pierced also by the sun
at its highest. Condensation crystals formed
on the plastic, exploding with light, while you slept
accidentally on the empty express:

the kindest accident! the perfect rest!
to miss the mess
to ascend the stairs
and arrive so quickly, finally,
into the familiar light
of your neighborhood. Yes.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Calgary Martin is originally from Washington State, but spent her formative years in Brooklyn, NY. Her poems appear in Hayden's Ferry Review, Cimarron Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Nashville Review, The McNeese Review, Tupelo Quarterly and others. She lives in Illinois with her husband and son.