four short poems
Print
Delete the Mobile
I am ready to lean on volcanic activity
for the weary travel consultant Westerner.
Inside her instability is a bonus—
a potential wormhole to the war wounds.
We’ve been cross folding Nirvana.
It’s civilization we hunt to. A phone
was coming too, this is the immunity we love.
Social Observations
For once I don’t need to inhabit
or to appropriate the life;
I need to understand why my
Experience hastens the denials
& what hope there is in a vacuum.
Passages
summer ends again.
I do your bidding & you do mine.
the flashes run deep but invisible, &
we are part of the national callous,
standing on a hill & swearing.
Poem
“I don’t understand why you
make the decisions you make.”
If he said that in 50 years
it would be completely different.
That’s my idea of something beautiful.
Contributor
Edmund BerriganEDMUND BERRIGAN is the author most recently of Can It (Letter Machine Editions) and We'll All Go Together (Fewer & Further Press).
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Up Space, Down Space: Moving Dancers of New York
by MG LeeMAR 2019 | Dance
While there’s been a flourish of big name choreographers and residencies cropping up in Upstate New York—Stephen Petronio and Jonah Bokaer, among others— emerging, local groups are also looking upstate for space and solitude to rehearse.
CHARLES STEIN with Raymond Foye
FEB 2019 | Art
Poet Charles Stein teaches art writing at the MFA program of the School of Visual Arts, New York. His work comprises a complexly integrated field of poems, philosophy, art theory, mathematics, translations from ancient Greek, drawings, photographs, lectures, conversations and music performances. Born in 1944 in New York City, he is the author of fourteen books of poetry. He holds a Ph.D. in literature from the University of Connecticut at Storrs.
Downturn New York
by Daniel S. PalmerFEB 2019 | Editor's Message
New York City is a place of perpetual change, but perhaps this has its limits. I’ve only lived here for about twelve years, but the past two or three have felt particularly different and especially precarious for the arts and for artist communities. Accordingly, this feels like the perfect moment and venue to bring together a group of New Yorkers to reflect on the changes that have happened to this city in recent years, and to discuss how they have impacted the creative sector.
New York Cycle, a Diary
by Catherine Cusset, an excerpt translated from the French by Armine Kotin MortimerDEC 18-JAN 19 | Fiction
Fifteen years later, New York has changed. The twin towers no longer fill the view when you cycle down Fifth Avenue or rollerblade toward Downtown beside the Hudson. The East Village, Alphabet City, and the Lower East Side have gentrified. The Williamsburg Bridge has been repaired and now leads on both sides to neighborhoods inhabited by trendy young people.
RSS