Weekly Poem: City Life

May 02, 2014

By Don McIver

Bent screws.
Yard bricks displaced.
Wooden fence posts splintered.
A late night car hopped the curb,
ramped up my neighbor's driveway
and took out the corner of our fence.

A short fence, anyone could step over it with almost no effort,
but it kept people out,
kept us safe from bums,
random drunks, and passers through
that call this part of the city home
too.

I prune the mangled bush,
pullout the corner post,
somehow broken where one end met the Quickrete,
and build up the corner from those displaced yard bricks
and loose soil so that the corner of our yard
can hold the fence upright once again.

A handful of new screws,
wood shimmied and screwed in place,
and the corner of our yard looks about the same,
though now hiding some rigged handiwork,
to make the fence
upright and straight.

Repairing fences was not
what I thought I'd be doing
in this city life,
but so it is
as I lock the door behind me
and sit to write this poem.

(Photo by thefixer)

This piece was written by:

Don McIver

Basic Human Needs Award winning poet, Don McIver is a four time member of the ABQ slam team, a host/producer of KUNM’s Spoken Word Hour, the author of The Blank Page, The Noisy Pen, and editor of A Bigger Boat: The Unlikely Success of the Albuquerque Poetry Slam Scene. He’s performed all over the United States including the Colorado Performance Poetry Festival, Tucson Poetry Festival, the 3SidedWhole, the 2011 and 2012 Solofest, and TedXABQ, and TedXABQ Women. He’s produced, curated, and hosted poetry events big and small including the 2005 National Poetry Slam, and been published in numerous magazines and anthologies. He’s a board member of New Mexico Literary Arts, a former Albuquerque Slam master, a member of the Executive Council of PSi from 2006-08, he Poetry Wrangler for Sunday-Chatter (where he’s performed numerous times), and is the Poetry Curator for the NewMexicoMercury.com.