Gigantic Day

Michelle Boisseau Click to read more...

IMG_1882 - Version 2Michelle Boisseau is a Professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Her books of poetry include: No Private Life (Vanderbilt, 1990), Understory (Northeastern University, 1996), Trembling Air (Arkansas, 2003), A Sunday in God-Years (Arkansas, 2009) and the forthcoming Among the Gorgons.  Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Yale Review and Ploughshares. In 2010 she received an NEA Fellowship in Poetry and in 2015 was awarded the Tampa Prize.

 

We are bemoaning how the rising 
	deluxe condos will bully the river

when jittering toward us come irises
	rocked in a beaming woman’s arms.

Then all along Millbank they come
	hugging froths and sprays from the selloff,

blue dithers and nodding nasturtiums,
	foxgloves jiggling their freckled bells,

from shopping bag and trolley dangle
	panting fuchsias and apricot roses,

a Japanese maple whirls in a tango
	through the taxis on Chelsea Bridge Road

and a warble of calla lilies opens up
	to hit the high note that rumbles through us

as we all stream toward the tube stop,
	past the humming double-decker bus

where every lap is plumped with bounty
	and down we go following a crush

of petals onto the underground
	platforms brimming for the rush. 

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