I can’t find my footing on this sliver of a sidewalk. I curse whoever slapped
these streets onto this hillside, tipping the contents of the steep
driveways into the streets,
tipping the streets down the slopes into the valley.
The main plaza is cleared and flat so the grand buildings can stand,
but the streets start climbing immediately all around it,
and to get there together we navigate the motorcycles, the trucks, the suggestion of stop signs,
the man on a mule-drawn cart slowly ascending the one-lane, two-way street,
towards us, of course. It’s not his fault.
The taxi drivers can barely afford gas:
each trip to the pump is less than five minutes
and empty is always a breath of fumes away.
Not that I don’t find this street beautiful, I do,
but I hate to say how comfortable I am in the richest part of town,
it’s what I’m used to,
the wealth piling up around me like snowdrifts
or fallen leaves
as I make my way through a small warren of my own.
But even the most expensive homes have signs of wear,
the concrete walls cracked and moldy.
Back on the home street, there are also concrete walls
with barbed wire or shards of glass as a deterrent,
but I still get a peek of a garden,
of a birthday party being set up in a courtyard,
and there are the neighbors of thirty years,
and there is the bakery just a block away
with fresh bread every morning.
They know us here
and we just got here.
They don’t know us over there—
they know us here,
and we just got here,
we just arrived the other day,
to the top of the hill where there is a
view of the city. I don’t even know what direction
we’re facing, but there is the most beautiful view.

Natalie Korman is a poet and fiction writer with recent work in Soft Star Magazine, Sublunary Review, and Harpy Hybrid Review. Her chapbook, Heliotropics, was published by dancing girl press in 2017. An alumna of Barnard College, Natalie lives in California where she enjoys contemplating the poetics of the banana slug.

Natalie’s previous piece: NATALIE KORMAN’S DAY OFF (Issue 37)