“Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something.
You are not here long.”
–Walker Evans
(after the Cantor Arts Exhibit, Stanford University)

The small town
windswept streets,
their flophouses
and weatherworn
sharecropper porches,

hold the stare
and want
and will
of those
who people them.

The speech
of image,
already past tense
in the snap of shutter,
still endures

like deep south rural
main streets impoverished
as dust bowl fields,
yet resilient
as life itself.

Andrena Zawinski has two prize-winning collections of poetry, “Something About” and_ “Traveling in Reflected Light.” Her latest book, “Landings,” is forthcoming in 2017. She has also authored four chapbooks. She is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com and founder of the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Poetry Potluck and Salon. She lives in Alameda.

Sharing is caring!