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The Grammar of the Streets Thirst Who Has Seen the Wind Blow
Three poems by Sharon Goodier
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Published August 16, 2015
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The Grammar of the Streets
In February cold
they pile up
like run on sentences
around open air vents
warm doorways
church basements
They live in parentheses
belongings piled
in bundle buggies
bodies bent with
survival
These are
the dangling participles
misplaced modifiers
in a system
of crumbling
semantics
They are the skin of our teeth
As our tongues seek
the syllables of a new
syntax
we must hang on by them
Thirst
Above a dome of pollution
stratus clouds
ghosts of a vanished continuity
Land below
water recedes.
takes longer for rain to come
This bucket of dust is not
what was meant by
“of dust thou art
to dust return”
This is the beginning of thirst.
Ignoring the message
dust bunny egos no one sweeps
transform into power balls
eventually covering everything
til we have to wear surgical masks to breathe
and look for a radical
vacuum
Who Has Seen the Wind Blow
I have seen the faces of children pregnant with sorrow
raped by a reality too brutal for tears,
the cries of mothers reaching their way to tomorrow
searching for hope in the midst of all their fears
The sun that rises each morning brings its renewal
seeds of hope on the margins of the oppressed
battered, abused, impoverished, society’s drool
our shame protected by denial’s shock-proof vest
It bothers just like a stone lodged in a shoe
that wears us into blisters that remain
The stone dislodged is still in memory’s queue
No more denying or avoiding pain
The moon in a month slips through silken phases
revealed and hidden by various clouds that pass
shedding its light on everything that raises
awareness and pushes our anger to critical mass
Biography
Sharon Goodier is an emerging Toronto poet with a passion for social justice
issues. She was long listed for the Mary K. Ballard chapbook award in 2015
and has three poems appearing in Dove Tales in May 2015. She has self-
published a chapbook of poetry of social change in 2014.
