My neighbor’s daughter has created a city
you cannot see
ruled by a noble princess and her athletic consort
all the buildings are glass so that lies are impossible
beneath the city they have buried certain words
which can never be spoken again
chiefly the word divorce which is eaten by maggots
when it rains you hear chimes
rabbits race through its suburbs
the name of the city is one you can almost pronounce
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“Utopian” from the book The Volcano and After: Selected and New Poems 2002-2019 by Alicia Ostriker, © 2020. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.