shifting

in january
she switched to graveyards
and now she moves through
empty streets –
in her waking world,
the city has only
a handful of occupants:
video store workers, some
late night janitors, security
guards, gas station attendants
peering out from behind
bullet-proof glass

some months in, she has
difficulty remembering what
the day was like with all it’s people,
and when she is confronted with it
(on the odd occasion) she finds herself
feeling squeezed in an unfamiliar fashion,
all the surrounding bodies in the sun
like many hands around her arms and legs,
a pressing on her rib cage

nocturnalized, she dreams when we wake
of her eyes becoming small, black and reflective,
of thick fur growing on her shoulders

city

In darkness a far-off whine of sirens
when the seagulls have quieted
there is the scraping
of rats behind dumpsters
with lids open like
jaws, he reaches his arm
inside the mouths,
fingers groping
for a bottleneck
he listens for the clink of glass.

apartment windows with
blinds open flicker
like so many candlewick flames
illuminated by paper lamps from ikea,
there are cacti on the ledges,
spider-plants overgrown, a cattail
twitching here and there
a figure passes,
the west end sighs with
merlot on its breath,
blowing vancouver’s
famous cherry blossoms
from their limbs -
there are haiku poems
strolling the beach
looking for vacancies
and rent-control