CITYSCAPE

There are streets like this everywhere now:
Six lanes, forests of tall signs, motels,
Cheeseburgers, auto parts,
Moist air thick, redolent of exhaust and French fries.
Narrow sidewalks do not expect foot traffic,
Those who use them, threatened, resented,
See up close things other pass in haste:
Where ashtrays have been emptied,
A failed fast food franchise, off-brand,
Demolished and vanished in a day,
A street where you cannot remember what used to be there.
Look, a break in the curbing, a driveway entrance, one car wide:
People must have lived here once.

appeared in Hazmat Review fall 2006


Robert Demaree's first book-length collection of poems, Fathers and Teachers, was published April 2007 by Beech River Books. He has written two other short collections, a History of Greensboro Day School, and has had over 275 poems published or accepted by approximately 75 periodicals, including Cold Mountain Review, Elk River Review, Louisville Review, Maelstrom, Mobius, Millers Pond, Paris/Atlantic, Pegasus, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Red River Review, Red Wheelbarrow and Thorny Locust.