October 8, 2022 - “October’s Dusk all over Again” by Jordan Myers
Murray Hill is a different city. I walk by a Starbucks
& across the street theres’a tanning studio. I try hailing
a cab and someone says Patsy’s Pizza is way better than
Tony’s. Midtown east is a foreign land: an almost silence
in the middle of Manhattan / October’s dusk all over again
October 7, 2022 - Rahil Najafabadi’s “Red River”
RED RIVER
I am Iran––
I dress for death in a white shroud, not a black veil.
The thorns on Sohrab’s rose pierce my skin,
but the love is still a stream of my blood.
رود خون
من ایرانم؛
.کفنم سفید است، نه سیاه
از گل سهراب خارش ماند در رگم
.و عشقش ز خونم جاری
This poem was written as a response to Sohrab Sepehri’s poem “Darkness.” Sohrab Sepehri was one of the most influential contemporary poets of Iran. Within the poem, he writes “I am a muslim, my Qibla is a red rose.” This poem hopes to revive the Iranian love that is always a current within all Iranians, a quality they express through their poetry regardless of religion, ethnicity, gender, nationality, and language. “Red River” is also an elegy for Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, Hadis Najafi, and Nika Shakarami, among other countless brave women and men in Iran fighting for freedom.
October 6, 2022 - Daniel Damiano’s “Brooklyn Street, Sunset Park, Early September”
Sidewalks
catch tears
raining
from emoting air conditioners,
boxes of unclaimed novels
with Gratis scrawled,
every handsome façade
and tended rose bush
and well-swept entryway
contrasts
neighboring houses
seemingly left for dead,
with eroding steps
bookended by rusted railings,
an over-painted doorbell frozen in time,
an intercom with exposed copper entrails,
yet someone lives here still,
and, from time to time,
puts out a used pair of brown loafers;
free for anyone who happens to be a 12 wide.
October 5, 2022 - Rahil Najafabadi’s “Everything Works”
EVERYTHING WORKS
My mother tells me to listen to the sun––she hums
when the light is faint, when everyone is still asleep.
The day sings with the leaves that fall and soon
I will step on them to make a crunch in the beat.
The frozen night tastes like a bitter lake sometimes,
it takes me away from the fireplace and my heartbeat.
My father tells me I need to be careful with words,
with pictures and moments I live and let out to the world.
I live in a glass bubble, but I know it pops and I will see
the way Earth spins, and how the bubble stands still.
My brother tells me, “Everything works,” and I believe him.
My mother tells me, “Let go of the wind that makes you fall.”
My father tells me, “Pick a name that makes you who you are.”
Everything works, and I believe them.
October 4, 2022 - Elizabeth Lerman’s “Dark & Dawn”
There has been no light, lately and I do think I love it that way and would maybe even want it dark all the time but I do not know what that would do to me and mostly, I would like to find out but something stops me, after a certain point, from needing night like that, forever, I mean, and I do not know much about day, only that it feels nice to be there, sometimes, when I forget what hours are and start to dream while I’m awake and I think, once it gets to the point of peeling my mind off the wall, of getting sick at the sight of it, of knowing I am running out of room, the day draws me out gently and it has been too long, which feels so good to say, because missing the sun like this settles me, sometimes, when dark and dawn begin to blend.
October 2, 2022 - “The First Sunset of Fall” by Jordan Myers
Last Thursday I was walking up Ninth Avenue at about six forty-five in the evening and dusk was everywhere. All around me people would stop what they were doing, stand near the curb with their phones raised before them, and snap photographs of the way the last remnants of the day’s sun was falling across the buildings in the distance. Everything was the softest combination of orange and red, a strong contrast against the early night’s sky: the first sunset of fall.
October 1, 2022 - “The Ritz Diner” by Jordan Myers
Three men and one woman sit at a table by the window
rehearsing lines from a play. Something about “Last year
you spent New Years with your no good dad, this year
you’re coming home.” Three men in white shirts & black
pants hover and float around the place, dodging chairs,
tending to tables, writing menu choices down on small
notepads. It’s almost five in the morning and a man in
blue jeans and a navy down vest over a white sweater
stumbles in. Under the influence he demands chicken
fingers with fries to go and asks whether there’s chocolate
ice cream. There isn’t, they say. But there is oreo cheesecake
September 30, 2022 - Rahil Najafabadi’s “Passage”
Some days, I feel like a floating passage.
Time becomes the thing that hurts my feet,
and air is the silhouette that confirms,
I am simply here.
Gravity, the shin of my feet, and hours
of standing still. The walls crack as soon
as my existence ceases in rooms others
just like me, will fill.
We are passages of dizzy love, we clash––
And soon my feet cramp before I can take
another step. Where am I going without air?
I need more time.
September 29, 2022 - Daniel Damiano’s “They Were Always Nice to Hear, Anyway”
There was that large, gelatinous
tarot reader
at Peddler’s Village,
a Benson & Hedges Menthol
always as her sixth finger,
who saw my mother’s future
on a wooden TV tray
in a dimly lit booth
crammed between the candy store
and the arcade,
and always with such psychic certainty;
the man who would whisk her away
from her Jersey doldrums
whose name would begin with G or T,
a modest financial resurgence,
a foreseeable move
to a balmier climate;
the expectancy of everything
always left my mother so exhilarated,
though she went back so often
it was difficult to tell
if anything came to fruition
or if the best part of her future
was the mere prediction,
but she never failed to reveal
every prophecy to me when I was a kid,
as if they were
bedtime stories,
before I went to sleep
believing
and waiting
for things to change.
___________________________
Daniel Damiano is an award-winning playwright, actor, novelist, screenwriter and poet based in Brooklyn, NY. He recently premiered his latest solo play, One With the Current, as part of the 2022 Dream Up Festival at Theater for the New City. Other recent productions include The Lepers (Ensemble Studio Theatre Marathon, NYC) and Harmony Park (Detroit Repertory Theatre). His acclaimed play Day of the Dog is published by Broadway Play Publishing. He is a Pushcart Award nominated poet, with poetry published in Crooked Teeth Literary Magazine, Newtown Literary Journal, New Voices Anthology, Cloudbank and HotMetal Press. His forthcoming novel is Graphic Nature, adapted from his play.
September 28, 2022 - Cameron Colan’s “Window Still”
Window Still by Cameron Colan
Smoking cigarettes on the window sill
few places as serine, few places the minds feels this still
staring out into a sea of cement and sin
this little place, makes one grateful for the skin they’re in
time races by, in front of the half city, half sky
to feel alone surrounded by millions
floating; a moment that millions of moments can rest in
time & time again
the window sill offers peace
time & time against
time & against time again
time & time again you see bonafide madness navigating this concrete disaster granting each
a beautiful strangeness that at moments makes each inhabitant feel like an angel’s bastard
a place to lose yourself
a place to be found
a window sill
a place to rest the mind with your feet off the ground
inhale, hold it in, take a look around
the city’s symphony, a cacophony, pure calamity
yet on the window sill one feels only a single sound
terrestrial symbiosis woven within mythical prosperity
you think “nothing too special”
yet these moment meet you in a way that’s supernatural
the breeze blows through your hair, a smile cracks upon your face and right there you become grateful for not just this moment but this entire place
Thank you City for the pain, Thank you city for the grace,
thank you for this moment of stillness, thank you for allowing me to run in your rat race
for even though off of this window sill you come at us with an unbearable pace upon it you feel gentle dragging across our skin, tickling, akin to a piece of silk or lace;
far off from the cries, crashes or needles we feel all over this place
even with the smoke in my eyes
even with your games & lies
these manmade mountains sparkle
even on a night like this, black as charcoal
time & time again
whether it was a day full of play or one that left the head aspin
the window sill accepts its call
granting each a moment to feel free
still, a bit above it all
September 27, 2022 - Elizabeth Lerman’s “Whatever Forever Feels Like For Now”
There is a train here that goes through the trees. The first time I saw it, I thought I was dreaming and I stared at my hands for a minute, maybe two, and watched my fingers move, curled them into a fist and felt nail settle into palm. They bent like they belonged to me and so I looked up again, awake, I knew now, seeing this for certain. The green blurred by in a way I didn’t know happened here. I had never seen it stretch out that way before, never noticed all the forest trying to grow through gravel, the tracks under the bridge where something had always been blooming. I mean, I noticed, maybe, when the dog barked, when the sidewalk shook, but I didn’t know that if I stood on a platform, sat in a certain spot, and stared out a window, I would see green going by like that, didn’t know I could open my eyes, feel my fingers, and still see floating forests and I think, as I go back and forth through low hanging leaves, that I could do this forever, or, at least, whatever forever feels like for now.
September 26, 2022 - “Everyone was up here celebrating everything” by Jordan Myers
We ran through the rumbling city Saturday mornings
in September. We met at 23rd & Tenth Avenue, outside
the gallery before the rain and after two cappuccinos.
The M14 bus kept going west to east then east to west,
river to river to river, then river again. We kept going
to bars with juke boxes & putting quarters in the machines
after three whiskeys, dancing, stepping outside for cigarettes,
then rushing back in again for another round, neat. Everyone
was up here celebrating everything. September afternoons
we’d watch black & white films in Aubrey’s loft as the sun
would fall from the sky. When the first orange light across
the way would flicker, we’d huddle on her fire escape & together
we’d feel those first few cold breezes of fall. Sundays we’d cycle
over to the square, west Fifty-fifth & Seventh Avenue –––
then west, still west, we’d reach the Hudson and look out over
the water, shining beneath the Manhattan moon: one long silence,
a few thoughts about back home, a breath, then we’d go again.
September 24, 2022 by Jordan Myers
I’ll go out into the winter garden of the city
with all of my jackets on and wait for the snow.
Neon signs will flicker across the street and I’ll
glance at a balcony twelve flights up beneath
the moon. You’ll whisper from the other side
of Sixth Avenue as Saturday night collapses
into Sunday morning. You’ll call it dawn.
I’ll call it the city slumbering across our apartment
sleepy-eyed with whiskey on its breath and smoke
in its lungs. No bother: coffee, shower, a four mile run ––––
we go again
September 23, 2022 - Rahil Najafabadi’s “The Wind”
I called on the wind that strokes the sea.
How did my home become so broken?
Freedom is on the other side of this tear-gassed road.
Behind every shard of protest, the red truth stains.
There is justice buried with roots of revolution.
There is life that flies from the wings of women
who had to walk the bloodstained mile to heaven.
____________________________
This Friday, I am dedicating my contribution to Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman who was murdered by morality police in Iran. This heartbreaking death has sparked protests across cities in Iran to overturn the law of compulsory hijab within the country. Women in Iran are fighting a battle for all women, risking their lives to march and stand up for their right to dress the way they choose. As an Iranian American, I wish to see the day women in Iran and everywhere in the world have their freedom, justice, and peace.
- Rahil Najafabadi
September 22, 2022 - Elizabeth Lerman’s “The Light is Different Today”
The light is different today and I am certain something has changed. An imperceivable shift that really only shows itself through afternoon sun slipping between low hanging leaves. Wherever there is a gap, a needing, wanting space, in buildings, in trees, in most things in between, a new season’s song fills the cracks, the corners of the city that ask for a speck and not much more, the places that could keep standing as they are but where, if you look closely, there is some soft spot stretching out to see what’s changed, craning its concrete neck, bending its branches to let all the brightness in, or even a small part of it, whatever rays it is able to spare, to lend, maybe, so that everything here can feel the way new light falls.
Elizabeth Lerman’s “When I dream, it is cold there too”
There is a soft nostalgia that seeps from the seams of the season’s first sweater. Something sweet and scary spools out from the threads of the thing. Maybe it’s September and what it means, how it feels to exist, always, at the beginning and end, sitting between here and somewhere. And when the wind grows cooler it coats my mind with memories that might not belong to me, because if they did, wouldn’t I remember? The fall smells like someplace sentimental. When I dream, it is cold there too. The woods keep coming back and there is always someone in them, always a reason to run inside very fast and lock the doors behind you. There are two stories here, two scenes where nothing feels safe and I think, looking out at the water, that even if I made it there I could not make it there. The dog is whining now and I am moving so slow I know I must be sleeping, but still, I want to slam my head against the wall to see if it sets something right. Instead, I put on my coat and buckle her collar and turn to the front door. It is not how I left it. All three locks are undone. All three locks are undone. Is that how I left it? I open the door and shut it behind me, not sure what I am keeping inside while I step out onto a block breathing with the season, where I can walk against the wind, whisper words I’ve never heard, and wake up any time I want.
Rene Chandler’s “Cafe Light”
Having a cup of coffee with a loved one on a chilly spring morning and sitting by the window’s light, is a gift. Rene Chandler’s “Cafe Light” captures one of those mornings with a depth and strength so clear that just looking at the image speeds up time; and calls forth March, or April. For her work, we’re grateful.
Elizabeth Lerman’s “Here”
It is darker than it was before and I feel so naked now, alone, suddenly, my back bare, unguarded, open and offering, because skin is so special it seems, and when it shows too much I somehow want to hide and strip at the same time, say something like here I am, showing all of me now, for those who want to look, to take or touch, but I would say, also, I am scared to do it, I am scared of what might be done and it is darker than it was before but the night is silent and, still, I cannot understand how it is ever that way here, and the wonder of it holds me as I walk, a soft hand on my warm skin, burnt now, from the sort of sun you don’t expect to feel in a city but there are so many secrets and I know where I am now, I know I am almost home, past the gardens, gates heavy and hot, the chickens, asleep in their coop, do not rise when I walk by, tucked in already and pressed so sweetly against one another. Here, it is so quiet and so green and the brownstones sit stoically beneath streetlights and I think, not for the first time, that really, I may never leave Brooklyn.