AMBER DAWN

Hostile Architecture

I’ve learned to live with the inevitability of a third armrest
Actually, that’s a tired lie. I haven’t learned to live

I haven’t learned to distinguish myself
from the surroundings. I am something
like stripped timber screws and pressure-
treated skin, a thermoplastic-coated steel
pubic crest. Centre bar split, a magician’s
assistant perpetually being sawed in half
Abracadabra
Hostile architecture

I haven’t learned to live
in a city that caps the shaded
anchor of Ironworkers Bridge in concrete teeth.
Store frontages along Main Street edged with stone spikes

once I stood in a gutted bus shelter with an old timer
drinking soup-kitchen coffee in Styrofoam cups. We recited
the Serenity Prayer, our common balm, our last gasp solace
the serenity
the things I cannot change

once I was loitering
actually, that’s a tired lie or a federal law, same difference.
once I was charged with loitering. Stop
and frisk street check on the corner of Semlin and Pandora
a disturbance or obstruction, no peace, no quiet. I was
something like suspicious circumstances and reasonable
grounds, a mental danger. I was a teenage girl

in a city public space is malignant. Abnormal mass
spreading to bone and nerve and it hurts to lie

down

a third armrest
is never about rest

AMBER DAWN

is a writer and educator living on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations (Vancouver, Canada). Her third poetry collection, Buzzkill Clamshell, is forthcoming in Spring 2025.