Angel
Nowhere to go but home. The subway crawls
Into slow and start; advertisements
Stare back. A plan in these tracks, this carrying
Of love and narcolepsy, where one glove withers
By a flat rose. I dim with others in the losses
Of light; the wired voice too late for each station.
There is only me at 59th & Eighth.
The escalator laments, ticks, and I rise toward the cold
When suddenly beside me a boy, a wind,
With terror in his eyes, holds his weary sex
Delicate and turning in his hand.
His face says we cannot pass through this
Unharmed. Into fluorescence we ascend
As each step disappears, left behind.
Report to Nirvana
(Nightclub Nirvana atop the Great White Way, 1 Times Square Plaza)
Too much piped in air. The elevator receives,
Speeds up the one tunnel it knows
Through garbling floors that light up and sound
As we pass dark offices and nightmaids—
Too long in this place. Even as we sleep
Work is given out. And those of us who cannot sleep
Endure strangers once again, someone
To say words the exact way you waited
All your life to have them said.
We have been here too long. A woman wants
To buy you a drink, another asks for a match.
Pretend you already know this architecture
Was planned with leaving in mind,
To stand on top of, perhaps in love and baying
At the sky, this place we nightly manuever
Toward the same seat with someone
To spread desire out for. You forget
What you ever knew, high, getting
Higher until everywhere and anything
Can happen. And it’s enough.
The Rest Area
Too much
Went into this view, overlook
And souvenirs
Quickly forged.
It is hard to trust the luck of keeping awake
In this kingdom ruled
By the sleeping
Night steward in his chair.
It is hard
Not to take
Personal whatever comes this way.
Nothing has
Become easier
Than this sadness. An ore of traffic
Starts down
Route Seven:
Highway of fathers moving
Between work
And what is
Worked for; filling stations
Blink out,
Gestures hang,
Either misunderstood or tired of fighting.
Powerlines
Hiss over
Perfect grass, over guardrails—
Black teeth
Against which
I brace, somewhere
Between desire
And the place
Where satellites
Keep their watch.
Sophie Cabot Black’s work has appeared in various magazines and anthologies—most recently Best American Poetry 1993. Her book of poems, The Misunderstanding of Nature, is available from Graywolf Press. She divides her time between a small farm in New England and New York City.
Los Angeles is distinctive for its magic hour; that time of day when the sun is teasing the horizon.
Mitch Epstein’s enigmatic approach to conveying life in New York City gives one “the opportunity to ponder what photography can and cannot reveal about our public lives and our most private selves,” according to reviewer Marvin Heiferman.
In English the burning city / Hecuba dreams in my hand // Come man with cup / and hard-luck pitch // Upstream the brunch rush / shines upon our heads
Originally published in
Featuring interviews with Pedro Almodovar, Lily Taylor, Suzan-Lori Parks, Gregory Crane, Saint Clair Cemin, Paul Beatty, Martha Rosler, Djur Djura, Nancy Spero, Richard Foreman, Robert Barry, and Edmund White.
Let me tell you first about what it was like being a Black woman poet in the ‘60s, from jump. It meant being invisible. It meant being really invisible. It meant being doubly invisible as a Black feminist woman and it meant being triply indivisible as a Black lesbian and feminist.
Audre Lorde
