Ode to Iowa City

by Sheri Grutz

This town smells like poetry

through a sieve leaving gemlike rocks

reminds me of my kids

the second self of a youth gone wild

lapping up the energy from the

educated sky I've studied

this town smells like birth

I refused to watch to not pass out

black outs in bars at the ready of

a ship of fools so off course

this town smells like dogs

against the moon and angle of the

rotten tooth from sweetness and smokes

all they do is pay the last piper who

took trees away and fields away

so brick it up again with an overhead crane

and steel in your toes and nerves

nobody made good on promises here

strange encounters left it gaping as a sinkhole

strange roundabout of the past fornicating with

the otherness of my soul

games and concerts packed and praying

Hollywood angels got nothing on mist over river

this town smells like water

treated and tripled to hurry up the rain

floods and fairies and fallen virgins

imagine a town like this so sudden

in its scope of something greater than

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