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poetry
A Concrete Poem
by Michelle Barker
In the hungry city we make our poems out of concrete sharp-cornered stanzas of unforgiving grit with syllables that sparkle in the sun we walk on our poems we shape them into monuments and worship them we mark our dead with tomb-shaped poems make giant metal towers and pour poetry into them— with windows so that we can look down and see the rest of the poetry in the hungry city and the people that have fallen on it and the ones that sleep on poems instead of beds.
Michelle Barker's poetry has been published in Descant, Room (of One's Own), The Mitre, Cicada, and Cahoots Magazine. In 2002 she won a National Magazine Award for her creative non-fiction work. She lives in the Eastern Townships with her husband, children, and an assortment of horses, dogs and cats.