It being nighttime and nice
to stand in the dark a second
longer and look – the white
washed wall, satsuma ripe
with island sweetness. Because
sodium lights, how they stain.
After meals, you still gather peels
and make sparkles fly –
wouldn’t it be nice if your street
smelled like this, if the garbage
never piled up, laced with skins
and rinds, the stray dog clicking
on your heels, if you could live here
in a picture – face blurry, theatrical shadows,
orange peels bursting under your nose –
close up on a Farola Fernandina lamp
glowing above a bright blue door
you’ll never pass through.
Ryan Van Winkle is an American poet based in Edinburgh. His second collection, The Good Dark, won the Saltire Society’s 2015 Poetry Book of the Year award. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, The Edinburgh Review and New Writing Scotland.