Kathy Goodkin

Crybaby Bridge

I

Clouds low over a new city

Not new-to-me          newly citied

                glassed and upright          crane’s arm a fixture

Watch the skyline layer up like a body

                in real-time

                                         cells dividing and dying

II

Strung out on support beams

        hung highest in a bad world          the villain

I take pictures          but I don’t like pictures

Whatever sounds rise from the paved-over river

                                         will catch the cars that cross

The engine is a fake-out these days          a poor place-holding vibration

Plants grow up through it

III

Enough already          highway

                 coughing in the backseat

Pull up my hood          story me into a different place

Kathy Goodkin facilitates poetry workshops in a women’s correctional facility and serves as an editor for Gazing Grain Press. Her work has recently appeared in Denver Quarterly, DREGINALD, Redivider, RHINO, and elsewhere. Find her online at www.kathygoodkin.com