City Slicker

By Stephanie Barbé Hammer

In this mini-collection of city/country poems in mostly free verse, Stephanie Barbé Hammer runs in and out of sprinklers in a Manhattan playground, picks up a slug by accident in the Cascades, reads about sequoia on 5th avenue, make an uncomfortable journey to the Hôpital américain in Paris, strolls a surprisingly sensual Geneva Switzerland at 2 am, encounters a mountain lion in Anaheim Hills, boards buses and trains In Los Angeles, and attempts repeatedly to make peace with living in rural Washington State, with the spiritual assistance of Eva Gabor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bamboo Dart Press
• Release date: Jul 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781947240520

Book preview

67th street entrance, central park, 1958

(new york city)

the path off the big avenue with buses and taxis leads through an opening in a stone wall, past silent soldiers in bronze statue stillness, into an immense garden and in that garden is the playground. beyond that, are rocks and lawns and benches and the zoo entrance where the seals swim in their own private pond.

but let’s pause at the playground where all the friends are. the playground friends who are friends just because you see them every day. it’s that easy.

now stop.

sit in the sandbox with suzannah and wait for the man in green to come with his long metal wand to turn on the rain that springs from the metal post in the middle of the cement. he twists a screw or a bolt or a spigot or a bib or a wheel handle (that’s it!), and the rain comes. you will run in and out of this middle of the hot playground cold shower. not like something called a swimming pool, which you have not seen yet. that is thing people have in the country. but here in the city in the park in the playground there is spray that sputters shoots out and splats on pavement.

you dart around those droplets, screaming with surprise-shivers along with suzannah and della and the other kids including a girl who speaks only french, but it doesn’t matter, because playing is communication.

wait.

the ice-cream man comes with his cart, and maybe your father too if it is a saturday, and you slurp the sweet on a stick that your mother gives you, and then you run back because suzannah calls you into this magic circle, where you clap your hands and pretend they’re flippers, and you imagine being a creature always wet and always moving like water in the distance the sound of cars.

outside alone at night for the first time, 1959

(seattle, washington)

on a swing. alone because

the cousin has gone inside

for some reason. she is my only

relative who is my age that

i know about and i trust her

because she knows about grass

and going barefoot. i point my toes

to go up on the swing. lean back

she showed me this. and then i carefully

jump off… a skill i just learned.

i have never seen