There's always room for another rose in the garden, Rosanna Arquette said to her sister
Patricia
This driver, making the commute an anxious scene, bus going nowhere &

Infeasible construction making the clarification purpose worse-


It's still Oakland, these trucks are not metaphors and there's no revolution on the scene

My sense of urgency is lost to time lost

In a cubicle


I'm a high-powered cultural executive, he said

Me too

From and on the outside


Inside of course this doesn't matter

My guru supports me

In my efforts to achieve an insoluble freedom, a future


The guru is inside me

The yogis find this truth to be self-evident

And revealed


The objectionists, the culturevationists, they want a balance to measure my product

There is none

All hypocrisy stops here


And then starts again

Begins with me

The doctor says


About this poem
"The Transbay bus I take from Oakland to San Francisco every weekday passes the Port of Oakland, where more than two million shipping containers, and the ships and trucks to traffic them, pass through each year. Infrastructure 'far as the eye can see.'"
-Suzanne Stein

About Suzanne Stein
Suzanne Stein is the author of "Tout va bien" (Displaced Press, 2012). She works at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and lives in Oakland, Calif.

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2015 Suzanne Stein. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate