Sarah Heady

fig. 2 and 3: geometry of euclid avenue

STAINLESS STEEL PINEAPPLES EMPHASIZE THE SETBACKS

Thirty-five years since bicentennial
we wingnut the family,

overdo plastics. Sears catalog
dead, o that glossy thin slightly
sticky paper and o that smell,
pages slipping past one another like estuary beads
or seabirds’ homes. Gray sweater

and gray basketball
hoop weighted onto blacktop
by heaviest Chinese plastic,
box weighted into Chrysler
Town & Country trunk
en route to second garage.
The old gas line Dad
dug up and threw up
his hands over—

these setbacks are mandated by law
to protect the little sunlight still
penetrating the forest of towers:
the familiar city we return to,
diving from the palace roof.

Sarah Heady is a poet with roots in New York State’s Hudson Valley and is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. Her chapbooks include Eight-track underwater (2010, Splitleaves Press) and Cygnet (2009, _Catch/Confetti Press). As a founding member of the writing collective, the New Philadelphia Poets, she performed in Redemptive Strike: Reckoning the Decade at the Bowery Poetry Club in 2010 and In(visible) Keepsakes: A Modern Alchemical Carnival in the 2009 Philly Fringe Festival. sarahheady.com