Atlanta, even your magnolias
smell like credit cards—
they are pretty, sure,
they’re grand. Always
the whine of power blowers
like a thing strangled,
its last cries. Hear
the fountain tinkle
in the erotic shade
of a Japanese maple.
Atlanta, the twinkle
of your glass raids ill
in me. I’m trying to love you
without getting in the car.
Thorpe Moeckel teaches in the writing program at Hollins University. His work has appeared in Field, Open City, The Antioch Review, Poetry Daily, Orion, Poetry, The Southern Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. He is the author of three books of poems: Odd Botany (Silverfish Review Press, 2002), Making a Map of the River (Iris Press, 2008), and Venison: a poem (Etruscan Press, 2010).
