FEATURED POEMS – “Pier Forty-Six” and “Eight of Cups”
There’s always an air of sadness around a journal’s ceasing publication. But the Ocotillo Review out of Austin, Texas embraced it in their final issue titled “Last Dance.”
I didn’t know at the time I submitted some poems for this issue that it was to be their last. Now I get why they chose to publish these two in particular and why they placed them, as they did, almost at the very end of the issue.
I think of these two as bookends of a sort to each other. Pier Forty-Six is in Hudson River Park on the west side of Manhattan where I often walk. The Eight of Cups is a card from the Tarot, in this case specifically from the iconic Rider-Waite deck.
PIER FORTY-SIX
I was walking among geese who pecked
at crumbs in the turf of the reclaimed pier.
Helicopters chafed the clouds above the Hudson,
shuttling between the jagged Jersey skyline
and Manhattan’s upward thrust. The city
cast its reflection on the water, and I was filled
with sympathy for the carnival of the whole
human project.
§
In high school, my buddy Jay and I pitched a tent
in my backyard as far from the house as we could.
Smoking cigarettes we stole from my father,
we were poised on the edge of the world.
Cicadas chirped their siren song, and possibility
splayed itself before us. Whatever it might bring,
we would brave it together; that much we knew.
§
At the end of the pier, through fog on the horizon,
I glimpsed the tiny figurine of the Statue of Liberty,
her torch lit like the tips of my father’s Marlboros,
which glowed for a moment each time we inhaled.
EIGHT OF CUPS
If you turn around, you’ll see you left
before realizing you’d chosen to. Behind you
is the wall of crenelated cups you carefully built,
filled with the relinquished contents of your pockets––
lip balm, loose change, handkerchief.
The space with one cup removed was your exit
as well as your entrance. And, yes, that’s you,
the old man with the stick, red jacket and shoes.
You can only go in one direction now, old friend.
The bright, ambitious sun is eclipsed; you’re guided
by moonlight, reflected and reflective. Walk along
whatever river flows between the cliffs and crags;
each empties into that place of all returns, the meeting
of sky and sea––green-blue, blue-green––horizonless.
READ SOME OTHER POEMS (Click on the hot-linked grey text)
“Red Geraniums,” The Rainbow Project (Poets Wear Prada)
“Act III” and “Lo Stadio dei Marmi, Rome," Inlandia Journal
“Sonnet with Birch Trees, Tatars, and Crayolas” Cider Press Review, Vol.25 Issue #1
“Vocabulary Lesson,” Verse Daily
“Somewhere in Georgia” and “Belated Valentine for Alex,” Under a Warm Green Linden
“The Death of Heidegger,” Penn Review
“Christ of the Frogs, with Thieves,” “Catchment,” and “Operating Instructions” Full Bleed, (Maryland Institute College of Art)
“On the Sayville Ferry,” The Westchester Review
“Boy, Stepping from the Shower, a Towel around His Waist,” Full Bleed, (Maryland Institute College of Art)
“December 31st,” The Inquisitive Eater (New School Food)
“At the Precise Moment of the Solstice” and “First Encounter,” Marathon Literary Review (Arcadia University, Philadelphia)
“Monet vs. The International Pop Art Exhibit,” Honorable Mention, E. E. Cummings Prize, New England Poetry Club.
“Cytokinesophobia,” Palette Poetry
“At the Shrine of Moinuddin Chisti,” Podium, an online publication of the Unterberg Poetry Center at New York’s 92nd StreetY
“Beneath Me,” all the sins
“Questions for Anthropophogists” - The Inquisitive Eater (New School Food)
“Predilections of the Carnivores” - The Inquisitive Eater (New School Food)
“Self-Driving Tesla Involved in Fatal Crash” - New Verse News
“Correction” - New Verse News