City Across the Water

Ariel Dawn

Towers of cerulean mirrors, Chinatown blossoms, fog and golden streets bewitch before she turns into the Eastside: violent, historical, destitute under neon lights. A woman leans over scavenged treasures on a bedsheet, fine fallen things. A child plays a drum; a girl a guitar. The city across the water lures my love, island boy, into her high windowed deep alley soul; and I follow, along with a host of the unseen. Ancestors wait in our hotel room, their carpet bags and dark clothes; the ladies sit on the bed and read Tarot—the sea rises between you; something saves, and threatens to devour—and the men with cigars and silver flasks stand by the rose blue window and stare at the city and the war.

Ariel Dawn lives in Victoria, British Columbia with her son and daughter. She spends her time writing, reading, studying Tarot, and working on her first collection of prose poems. Recent work appears in Guest, Train, and Litro.