{"id":10716,"date":"2020-07-29T10:12:06","date_gmt":"2020-07-29T05:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/desire-lines\/"},"modified":"2023-02-15T16:18:32","modified_gmt":"2023-02-15T11:18:32","slug":"desire-lines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/editorials\/desire-lines\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Desire Lines&#8221; by Alison Braid, from Arc&#8217;s 2020 Shortlist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-soundcloud wp-block-embed-soundcloud\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"\u201cDesire Lines\u201d by Alison Braid by Arc Poster\" width=\"580\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F854055262&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxheight=870&#038;maxwidth=580&#038;secret_token=s-kOuCwmJRSoi\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Desire Lines <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Through the early damp hours, the bus<br>runs its first red. From the street, a man models a gun<br>of his baguette and shoots me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last night, he fired<br>a different loaf at a different girl and neither of us,<br>stubborn tourists, lay down<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>and died. I know what it\u2019s like<br>to let someone down. My blood gathers<br>its resources and continues running the circuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t have to be nice today,\u201d says the bus driver<br>with eyes like wading pools,<br>\u201cit wasn\u2019t in my horoscope.\u201d He refers<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>to the passenger listening to celestial noise<br>who asks to be let off at the fire hall<br>on Rua das Floras. She fashions herself fully clothed<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>in the eye of her beholder,<br>then makes herself smaller still.<br>Outside, a boy jaywalks, vaults<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>a barricade on the very place some brilliant worker<br>identified a desire line on Porto\u2019s roadway,<br>knew the route of our want and how to impede<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the travel. \u201cPlease,\u201dsays the passenger, whose cropped<br>red hair is growing in as she speaks and striking<br>a blaze atop her head. \u201cHe shot me,\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I try in my high, harsh English, meaning<br>the man with the bread, four corners ago.<br>The driver meets his own depths in the mirror,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>his blowsy luck at finding us here, and puts his foot<br>to the pedal, slings us into our second<br>red of the morning. Further down the block, a girl,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>the size of a prickly pear, wears a tutu and green<br>strappy sandals, looks both ways<br>and crosses the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She\u2019s carrying a fishbowl<br>and it\u2019s leaking, and we\u2019re all of us in it,<br>blinking inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>nina jane drystek on \u201cDesire Lines\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From the first red light to the second, \u201cDesire Lines\u201d creates an informal route cutting through reality at a slant. The surreal guides the poem\u2019s images and ideas as the speaker rides through Porto\u2019s streets. While the poem and speaker seemingly exit the desire line after the second red light, the arresting image of the leaking fishbowl forces us to question reality from every angle, especially our own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alison Braid<\/strong> is the author of the chapbook <em>Little Hunches <\/em>(Anstruther Press, Spring 2020.) Her work has been published in <em>Bad Nudes, The Puritan, Prairie Fire, CV2, Poetry Is Dead, <\/em>and elsewhere. Her poems have received Honourable Mention in <em>Grain<\/em>\u2019s 2018 Short Grain Contest, and been shortlisted for <em>CV2<\/em>\u2019s 2018 Young Buck Poetry Prize. She can be found online at <a href=\"http:\/\/alisonbraid.com\/\">alisonbraid.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\">&#8220;Desire Lines&#8221; by Alison Braid<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3097,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"10948,10870,10568,10584","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"genre":[150],"publisher":[],"issue":[],"poet-in-residence":[],"series":[3148,3265,3266],"topic":[3178],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10716"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10716"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=10716"},{"taxonomy":"publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publisher?post=10716"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=10716"},{"taxonomy":"poet-in-residence","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poet-in-residence?post=10716"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=10716"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=10716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}