Poem
Suzanne Stein
There’s always room for another rose in the garden, Rosanna Arquette said to her sister
Patricia
This driver, making the commute an anxious scene, bus going nowhere &
Infeasible construction making the clarification purpose worse-
It’s still Oakland, these trucks are not metaphors and there’s no revolution on the scene
My sense of urgency is lost to time lost
In a cubicle
I’m a high-powered cultural executive, he said
Me too
From and on the outside
Inside of course this doesn’t matter
My guru supports me
In my efforts to achieve an insoluble freedom, a future
The guru is inside me
The yogis find this truth to be self-evident
And revealed
The objectionists, the culturevationists, they want a balance to measure my product
There is none
All hypocrisy stops here
And then starts again
Begins with me
The doctor says
About this poem
“The Transbay bus I take from Oakland to San Francisco every weekday passes the Port of Oakland, where more than two million shipping containers, and the ships and trucks to traffic them, pass through each year. Infrastructure ‘far as the eye can see.'” – Suzanne Stein
About Suzanne Stein
Suzanne Stein is the author of “Tout va bien” (Displaced Press, 2012). She works at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and lives in Oakland, Calif.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2015 Suzanne Stein. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
