SEE THE CITY WITHIN THE CITY, say the handbills. Mechanical marvel. World wonder. Gold scrollwork swirls on the great wayfarers’ gate open for absent passersby. Driverless carriages navigate avenues between shrines and libraries and arboretums. In the empty market square, warm bread and vendor cries float on breeze from nowhere. ALL THAT AND MORE, promise handbills flattened into potholes and overflowing gutters. No mention of the rasp and rattle from a traveler who arrives with coffin fever. Not the scarlet spots alight in matching patterns where the body and the city burn. Never the scavengers in ever–closer circles. This miniature city goes on alone. The model of the model room lifts its roof to memories of guards who can’t scratch the feeling of being watched. Inside the model inside the model, within the city within the city within the city, legend holds that any who pry the lid up with a thumbnail find eternity, or whirring gears, or nothing. Above, a city–building goddess, eyes like skylights, stretches down past DO NOT TOUCH signs as if to try.

 

 

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STEVEN D. SCHROEDER is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Wikipedia Apocalyptica. His second, The Royal Nonesuch, won the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award from Southern Illinois University. His poems have appeared in Copper Nickel, The Cincinnati Review, and B O D Y, among others. He edits the online poetry journal $ (www.poetrycurrency.com).

 

The art that appears alongside this piece is by AMY RENEE WEBB.