Lower Manhattan

It felt strange to walk around Battery Park tonight. I still feel like I should be silent, like I should be muttering some kind of elegy to the suffered buildings. Like I should walk with my head slightly toward the ground. Maybe it's because I still think of this part of Manhattan as bruised. Or maybe, it's just me that is still tender. But after hearing Anne Carson read tonight, one thing remains: Death makes us stingy. However immensely beautiful the buildings seemed, the Hudson, the sky, the poems; tonight I want to keep it all to myself.

from Ceiling Unlimited Series

(magnet mine)

It isn't a question of what's quaint, what
hurts. If the telephone wires look like
an endless perch, the birds will avoid
the trees. The train's reflection in the water
can't help but glimmer more than the train.
As long as the local cathedral has an
unpronounceable name, people will come in
droves to sing their songs to the residual blue.
When the rain was wanted they used to shoot
cannonballs into the clouds. So prosaic. So pretty.
The planets couldn't be more so. Or if it's scale
that attracts you, come closer - there are seven
tiny piles of bright pigment in the sink. Lava-less-
lament, flimsy-attempt-to-draw-you-in-
call them what you want, but call them.


from Pity the Bathtub its Forced Embrace of the Human Form
By Matthea Harvey

The Awl

Here's to taking chances. A few weeks ago I read two of Matthea Harvey's new poems in The Awl, a new New York magazine that is interested in politics, culture, and the arts. Harvey is easily my favorite poet writing today. I was quite enamored with her poems and other poems published in The Poetry Section. So I sent Mark Bibbins a couple poems on a whim and wish, not even sure if they take unsolicited submissions. And as it turns out, they don't. All the work has thus far been solicited. But, the lovely Mark liked my poems and has decided to publish them in The Awl in a few weeks. I am thrilled and can not help but think a little turtle that left this world and broke my heart, has something to do with all the great things that are happening to me.


Matthea Harvey's poems in The Awl: http://www.theawl.com/2010/04/the-poetry-section-two-poems-by-matthea-harvey

A View to Love and Slaughter

A View to Love

A View to Ride

A View to Leave

A View to Eat

A View to Memorize

A View to Write By