Category: New York City

I went to see guitarist Gilad Hekselman at Jazz Standard tonight and wrote this poem before he started playing. I feel like many of my poems are as much diary entries or small pieces of reportage as they are poems. Or maybe they are those things and also poems.

/ / /

a man without a bank card will do almost anything

when I went to pay the cafe bill
I realized I’d lost my bank card

now I’m at the Standard with 13 dollars
enough for an iced tea and a bucket of fries

it’s what I would’ve ordered anyway
but now I’ll be broke at the end
in that I’ve-got-plenty-of-nuthin way

meanwhile I’m mired in a conversation
I’d give anything to not be having
but my mom raised me to stick with it
so I’m stickin’

everyone around me is speaking Japanese
I eavesdrop when my tablemate takes a break

one table over is a sax player with a US Census bag
sitting by accident next to a fellow Census worker
they’re telling Census jokes, which are the best

I’m holding a seat for my English friend
a surprise gift from the rain god
to whom I did not even think to pray

there’s a Swiss philosopher eating steak tartare
I say I think I know him, he says he thinks he knows me
we’re both wrong

the seat across from me remains empty

I wrote this after many hours of traveling.

the river under Rockefeller Center

the river under Rockefeller Center runs beside the third rail / garbage floats along it / rats bathe or swim or drown

on the D train a man with a voice like Miles Davis sings Stevie Wonder’s “Too High” / says, “Everything has got to work out right”

the woman next to me is reading the same book you were reading / which makes me suspect her instantly

I feel self-conscious when I write on the train / as if I’m doing it so people will see me writing

but when the words are ready to come out it’s lucky if I have a pen and paper to catch them before a song lyric drives them from my head /

to float down the river under Rockefeller Center

secret

to hide my true identity
I travel from restaurant to club
with a series of beautiful women
of wildly varying heights

there was a time — not long ago —
when even this would have seemed impossible
even now I’m surprised by our reflection
in the windows along the street

sometimes, in a Christopher Street bar,
over an improbable cup of tea
you find exactly what you need
or who

I could spend hours watching you laugh

waiting for the bus while the pigeons
look for scraps on the blacktop

also in line for this bus is a woman
with red feathers braided into her black hair

— I swear it’s true —

and another young woman next to me
has spent the better part of an hour
carefully inspecting every inch of her right leg

these New York summers make everyone a little loopy

back home we’d be dancing to reels
played by old men with a little bit of red
left in their beards

but in this city we each carry our own melody
hoping that someone else knows the tune

I wrote this tonight while listening to Amy Cervini at The 55 Bar in NYC. I wrote a poem the last time I saw Amy Cervini, too. This one is a combination of autobiography (although less so than in many of my poems) and things seen and overheard.

carbon copy

thunder rolls through the West Village
the bar patrons pull their glasses closer
basement captives of the summer rain

I learned recently that all I need to do
is find a carbon copy of you
somewhere on the streets of New York

the only time anyone calls is when I’m here
bartender hands me the phone
greasy with city dust and sweat

I put it to my ear but nothing’s there
not the ocean
or the harsh sound of your laughter

if Johnny were here he’d know what to do
black is the new black
he’s always in style

but it’s just me
this whistling guitar player
the rain on the street outside

barefoot on the N train

barefoot man polishing a smartphone
talks incessantly on the N train
until the woman across the car
screams “shut up! stop talking!”
everyone who had been pretending to sleep
is looking now, eyes drawn toward the end of the car
where the argument erupts into life
like summer thunder and is gone as quickly
the storm contained in this hot box beneath Brooklyn

A poem inspired by the Talk To Me exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibit is now in members-only preview and opens to the public on 7/24.

/ / /

talk 2 me in 1s & 0s
peer @ me w/ your LED eyes
tell me you love me w/ a stream of ticker tape
reach out & touch me

Exhale

he’s wearing a white Oxford
when his jacket arms pull up
I can see his shirt cuffs are dirty

now I look closer — frayed ends of his pants
shoes with worn soles and scuffed sides
a small cigarette burn on one lapel
hand under his handle-less briefcase

is he going home after yet another interview?
does he have a wife somewhere in Brooklyn
who thinks he’s at work?
or was she washed away, too, in the flash flood
of changing fortunes?

I wait because I know it’s coming
and it does:
the long exhale
the one he can’t control
the air forced out of his body
as if his own lungs are trying to
mercifully asphyxiate him

for a second I wonder whether he’ll breathe in again
he does
the train passes Chambers Street

I wrote this last night at the Village Vanguard.

/ / /

it takes a certain kind of person

to pull off that many non-ironic flowers on the front of her shirt

to wear his hair in a ponytail in defiance of age stereotypes

to don red Chuck Taylors more appropriate for a man with fewer responsibilities

to absorb the needy stares of this late-night basement

to not believe that the knot in your intestines was tied by her careless fingers

to assume this verse is free when the truth is I paid for it

to sit beneath all those photographs but not know your history

to step over, to walk around, to pretend not to notice, to look away

to sit and scribble in the dark while the man in front of the curtain spills his blood

to run the tips of your fingers across the soft skin just below your throat, knowing everyone is looking

to drink that drink like you never raised your hand to another human being

to remember what I wore that night but only because you didn’t like it

to play those particular notes in that particular order

to not know that the other half of this arrangement is that you are supposed to look over here

This is a found poem. A man sat across from me on the subway and said these words exactly in this order. I just set them as a poem. I love New York City.

lipstick is poison

a woman’s pocketbook is a transmitter
she wants to leave the fucking book at your house

and then a government missile
will blow up your house

women are government agents
secret agent man

after 10,000 years, rebel command
will be able to beat back the government

proton torpedoes
the world belongs to us

whoever possesses proton torpedoes
will be able to rule the world with an iron first

women are government agents
secret agent man