Manhattan Love

By BRIGIT KELLY YOUNG

the stars are dust on gray carpet
unvacuumed
and a man with a newspaper beret
makes a wish on a rat

this city
will one day be ruled by fish
silent as the tombstone of myths
this girl with the red shoes
will one day
have bunions
and our necks that crane
to look for stars
like the insane do
gazing for new endings
in the fated
will one day
bend together
like kissing swans
and you’ll love me
through this wishy washy
star-blind
borough

 

Brigit Kelly Young’s poetry and fiction have appeared in journals that include Gargoyle MagazineDrunken Boat MagazineThe North American ReviewEclectica MagazineMidwestern Gothic and 2 River View.

Manhattan Love

Related Posts

Palm Trees

Ho’omana’o

EDWARD LEES
The scrubbing out had been so forceful / that much was forgotten—the heat so intense / that gemlike crystals and glass / had formed, / like strange echoes.

Worn front door

From Sieve: A Preliminary Draft and a Ruin

HILDEGARD HANSEN
There were half-collapsed buildings at the sides of the road, the roof fallen in, stone walls still standing. Sometimes a small footpath and an old stone bridge, long driveways down to a stone house, smoke out the chimney.

Chair against the window

Susan

SARAH DUNPHY-LELII
I visit with a friend as she works to empty her mother’s house, who died just days before Christmas, and each object holds a tiny piece of Susan. I come away with several treasures lovely (a hand knitted scarf, a clay donkey to hold my garlic) and practical.