Keegan Lester
Poem to New York
The race ends
under caution.
Everything I say
Saturday night
sounds didactic
Sunday morning,
so won’t you
just hold my hand?
Let’s celebrate
the game
of connect four,
the plastic disks chuting
their plastic clunk
landing on top of each other.
The sound
is so satisfying
I think we
could become clams,
pearls replacing our hearts
always only a bus
away from china town
where the dead
will not follow us.
Make me malleable
and tough and the world
a phantom of clouds,
Picasso. Picasso, are you
outdated? Who is
the person
in charge of that
these days? You know,
looking at something
shifting its shape
until its outsides
more closely resemble
its insides. I created
a dance called
the elephant trunk.
None of the kids are doing it,
yet. I checked dance halls,
fire escapes and dirty places
housing romantic charm
like Berlin in the 50’s
or a seven eleven bathroom
this afternoon. I’m sick
of that boring poetry
that has fifty ways to describe
death, love and de-leafed trees.
There are things we can do
with our arms and legs
that will make us look
like smaller people,
that we can rename based
on the expressions of our face
when we almost get to where
we are going. There are so many
things I was unsure of
until I went looking for them.
