I once went to a New Year’s Eve party whose host, a burlesque dancer, handed each guest a dinner plate
to smash against a brick wall. I’ve never seen a roomful of people so suddenly awake, so reborn. Of course,
that was years ago, before we lost Brooklyn, before they came for Queens.
So it was written: the deeps covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone.
It goes like this. One person was chasing another. The sea split. There was a door. There was a crossing.
From one side to the other. Then the door slammed. It slammed in the face of the chaser. He was hit.
He was sunk. He went down.
1.
pure silver
it only feels right sometimes
when the moon comes in and the concrete
swells like waves
the scent of inland grasses
much sweeter than this sand
sometimes when the summer feels
just so
and the wind catches you
by the ankles
This work was created during the WoW/UNY Governors Island Residency. Kelly Sullivan was in residence on Governors Island from October 15-31, 2018.
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This work was created during the WoW/UNY Governors Island Residency. Jianna Jihyun Park was in residence on Governors Island from September 4-30, 2018.
My mother collected antique birdcages. Nature abhors a vacuum
so we filled the cages, first with budgerigars and canaries. They died
and we filled the cages again, with exotic finches that my father chose
and a pair of lovebirds (that detested one another). They died
and we filled the cages again with a grey-cheeked parakeet and a long-
tailed beauty (that didn’t live a year and had the solemnity of a widow).
My father vacuumed the floor beneath the cages and the parakeet
shrieked, shrieked, shrieked: “Abhor! Abhor! Abhor!” My father died
and we didn’t fill the cages again. We moved, we put the cages
in storage, we moved, we put the cages in the basement.
Yesterday morning while I read Montaigne
a man drove his car into the Gowanus canal.
I have never seen a greater monster or miracle
than myself, Montaigne wrote in the late 16th century.
It was a bright day.
The sun forgave no one.
Not even the firefighter who first saw
the car taken by the water while he was praying,
lighting a cigarette, remembering his lover’s face—
what was he doing, what did he think of before diving in?
You lay me by the Hudson. By the Prison.
Searchlight tower gone dark in kiddie park.
You came to Ossining to fetch me back.
Drove to Bronx, 2 am, for Kansas Chicken.
But I couldn’t eat, not behind their bullet-
proof glass. Not by grass, nor rocks, nor River.
Undid my strappy shoes and wet my knees.
We used to tease: fish here have three eyes.
There were four men on that train in 1865,
and all the other passengers just belongings
and the baggage of stranger souls. A Wednesday
evening. No fog. The signal given as the bridge
divided and the sloop went past.
Read MoreLiberty was not delivered to us in an envelope
she was shipped from grayer pastures and I
breathed life into you in a new land
I brought you here and into her arms
and I am awash of postcards and trapped lightning
I am scabbed over from the coins tossed into me
my currents were made for larger bodies
It was striper season in the early nineties
on the eastern bank of the Hudson River,
just south of the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge.
My dad, bareback-sloshed with beer and sun,
had his deep-sea pole cast for food. To him
no matter were the toxicity warnings
on most fish north of the Tappan Zee.
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All hurricanes are cubist: something seeing, something being
seen. A Picasso eye, splitting the world apart.
It seems they don't look at the ocean here,
have maybe gotten used to the smell of brine
as it wafts over gasoline and fried things
and the rumble of the shuttle,
the tired meandering of silver
against the blue of the sky,
of the sea.
Read More1. The Dry
(thinking about Lucretius)
When I tried to count the rings the next day
I estimated one hundred years.
Numbers create order, and I sought precision:
40 feet tall
60 inches around at my chest’s height
20 inches in diameter.
Read MoreIt was striper season in the early nineties
on the eastern bank of the Hudson River,
just south of the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge.
Read MoreWas a time what I took from you
I took into myself. My mouth
full of wood. Full of your bulk.
Now when I move, I remove you.
Nothing happens in which I don’t.
My mother collected antique birdcages. Nature abhors a vacuum
so we filled the cages, first with budgerigars and canaries.