another snippet of long poem...

XIV. Biking Barcelona

I borrow a bicycle from my landlord who lives

in the apartment above mine, a single mother

with a little girl who feels sorry for me in one breath

and envious in the other. She says I should bike

up to Mont Juic, see the stadium, she says, maybe Miro,

but instead I decide to bike further into the city,

planning a route up to Gracia to see a Chillida sculpture

in Creueta del Coll , an abandoned quarry turned park,

because today I feel like moving in, towards something,

and I am tired of swimming in my own black pools

of rock. At first I am clumsy on the bike, which is large

and orange, a beach cruiser you might see older couples

use, biking side by side to town from their summer

rentals on the coast of South Carolina, but the sidewalks

of Barcelona are not the wide effortless walks

of Sullivan’s Island or Folly Beach. They are thin,

packed with people walking briskly to work, to lunch,

to H&M to shop, infinite black and white bodies,

women in suits, students grungy and unbathed flying

down the uneven pavers on skateboards, and there is me,

an American woman feeling large and out of place,

weaving the deep streets, black creeks ruled with buildings

rising up like cypress trunks, on an orange bike like a horse

I cannot tame. What a long road this is. The wheels clop

against deep ruts in the blacktop, and I hold my breath

clenched in my jaw as I weave through people in my way.

The smell of urine passes up from the stone gutters,

and dark stains seep down the sides of buildings

like the roots of a tree spreading across the ground.

There is a break in the thick wall, a garden caged

in the alley, and when I look in, it is black and loud

with the chattering of cats, lapping up stale meat

on broken chairs and abandoned couches.

They are thin-bodied beasts, multiplying like the hidden

faces of children peeking around a corner, prisoners

stalking each other in the dark. I smell dead fruit and blocks

of lamb rotting in a trash pile outside of the market,

my neck is burning, wet, and I am sweating through

my thin button-up blouse as I pass the MACBA, white

against a black ground, a blue sky, whose front square

has become a haven for skaters, the homeless young,

and students sketching furiously, or studying on flat,

minimalist benches under the hot Mediterranean sun.

A young homeless man approaches me from behind

and taps me on the shoulder. I loose my balance,

the bike sways, my basket rattles, and the weight

of my bag falls to one side. I am gasping for air,

and he is laughing hysterically, the sound of a crying

bird, his dirty face distorted, wormy in the sun.

He is wearing a dark winter coat inside out

although it is summer, and this makes him look

like a large bull hovering in the square, blocking

my path. He is yelling something I can’t understand,

a loud caw, to his audience of half sleeping homeless

men and women, piled against the white tile finding

shade from its protruding end, and two of them

are making out, their thick hands around each other,

tongues moving in and out of mouths crusted over

from heat and drool. I am a bloated body on display

choking on my own fear like a toy knife, tears

in my throat, I pedal faster, hearing voices,

a bit of wind, and the echo of his laugh

behind me, rising up into the cloudless sky.