Emily Kirchner

If you step on a sidewalk crack,
You don’t break your mother’s back.
You slip through, underneath
into my neighborhood.


So much of my street
has slipped through the fractures
of capitalism and racism.
The mothers are Purple Heart veterans of class war.
Backs are broken by carrying households
stitched in threadbare economy.
It makes Atlas look like a casual backpacker.


I spend most of my walks outside
skirting around debris.
Lights suddenly glare green
Two seconds into crossing the road,
So I play
a nonconsensual round of “Red Light, Green Light,”
Ducking under the verbal litter
that drivers throw out their windows.
They screech past, shouting:
“Bitch!”
“Fucking idiot”
And tell me to drop dead.


I’m still more content here
than inside the wedding ring
that squeezed tighter every year.


New independence grows, along with my students.
The children I teach
hate naps, but love dreaming.
Their rose-tinted glasses need no prescription yet.
I know that life could be heavier.


Sometimes cracks are sealed
by glue that holds neighbors together.
We all feed scraps to the same stray cats.
When one of us gets locked out,
ladders are offered.
We light candles at the doorstep
for a young man
not all of us knew,
but could have.
We keep the vigil
and stay vigilant.


Last month was my brother’s wedding in Hollywood.
The night sky was bare.
Its stars splayed across the ground,
Fallen halos
dropped like hula hoops.
Light beckoned
from auras, ambitions, and iPhones.


I walked a barefoot night on Venice Beach,
silky sand
with no sharp shells to step on.
Homeless kids sat on sidewalks
while shattered glass glittered under streetlights,
blinking a secret:
Broken shards look just like diamonds
which I’ll find back home,
on my street
because they slip through the cracks
on either side.