Angels and Dogs Poetry Project Series (Part 2)

This post is the second in the series that will showcase the best work work submitted to the Angels and Dogs Poetry Project over the next month. Eds. Alan Parry and Matthew MC Smith

4am – Lauren Theresa

Jumping puddles and dodging yellow cabs,
taking the last drags of the last cigarettes.
The lower east side is damp with sweat and steam and dew.
Coffee and Halal.
The withering and waking, both abuzz. Both filling the air.

The striations of light and sound, wavelengths colliding, creating this magic liminal space
where the only constant is the flower stand on Hester Street.
There she stands smirking,
never choosing a side.
Our portal to eternal life. Our window between worlds.

Thom Yorke in the School Music Room Before He Was Famous – Judith Kingston

Too many inches of wrist, collar half-tucked into the neck
of his school jumper, ginger fuzz half-shaved, unsure
of where to put his limbs, his eyes closed, he lived in
a chord that filled the aching emptiness inside
so precisely, diminished seventh slicing through him, here
he was subsumed in music, a good kind of
invisible, the kind where no one can
touch you yet you are touched, the kind where
everything hums.

Old South Side, Indianapolis, November – John-Thomas Kelly

This time of year my neighborhood is littered
With beauty. Armfuls of the stuff. Foot-shuffles
Of it. The gutters of our crummy streets
Never look so good as when they’re battered
And fried crispy golden brown. It’s awful
To think that summer will come again. My feet
Will be conscripted to stamp the hot pavement,
And pleasure will hide all day in the cool basement.

Entrance – Matt Gilbert

You crossed that bridge to look for Waite in Brooklyn,
I followed just so I could walk back into the lights,
use limestone-granite towers, roads and cable
to sculpt nave and transept of a secular cathedral

Mammon’s island altar winking to the west, we turned,
second-arrival on a sound-stage shared with millions
– latecomers, our start was not down in the steerage,
but the worn promise of the possible shone clear.