Abby Caplin "Ideal Cities" at "Poets 11" 2016
Channel: San Francisco Public Library
Date: 2016-10-05

(Note: Abby was not able to attend this reading.)
In ideal cities, people swing down
sidewalks singing, and everywhere
is wheel-accessible.
I stroll side by side with my friend
Jonah as he maneuvers his chair,
and no one stares or pushes to get ahead.
In my ideal city, the beggar on the corner
remembers my name
and gives me a quarter.
He smiles and shows me
his perfect white teeth.
Kids give their bus seats
to Chinese women holding plastic
baskets of cabbage and fish.
In ideal cities, artists chalk
sidewalks with color,
and as an ocean sweeps
the sand of sandcastles,
morning rains wash them clean.
All coffee is fair trade, all toys
are made by adults who love to play,
all eggs come from free-range chickens,
and all food is free of poison.
In my ideal city, the mentally ill
are given clean apartments
with carefully folded clean clothes
and whatever services they need.
In my ideal city, women walk alone
at night with their telescopes, sit
in misty parks, marvel and howl
at the haloed moon.
In my ideal city there’s a museum showing
what no longer exists —
guns, gas stations, cigarettes,
nuclear power plants, shopping-cart homes,
skeletal babies with tight, swollen bellies.
In my ideal city, everyone listens to silence.