I recently read with some undergraduate students at New York University in London, based in Bloomsbury, and was taken by their talent, energy and performance ability. Here are four poems by four of the five poets who I read with that night. The fifth is currently reworking the poems they read. Maybe later.
ANDREW KARPAN
Andrew Karpan is in his second year at
New York University.
London
Waiting in the cue in Pentonville.
Hearing me, begins: “You’re not from here, are you?”
Genuine gut post-colonial interest; can’t help
asking
“No, no, you got to go to south London.”
She’s been here a while: wants to help,
Breasts diligently seeming to pop right out of her
shirt.
She’s a humanitarian; I listen attentively.
The same voice teaches elementary school kids in
Croydon.
“That’s the real London.”
Drinks: tequila shots, and a pint of the cheapest
beer I can find for her.
Upstairs: I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor.
I try to impress her, screaming sets of clever words.
But they spill out, all across
Dirty, sticky, booze-stained dance floor.
She says she writes poetry.
Adores: Plath, Kerouac.
Right now, she’s wearing metaphors.
Her purple cocktail dress: a stand in for all the
characters
In her unpublished novels.
Tomorrow morning she’s a bobbing head
Swimming from King’s Cross to Euston.
Tonight her name is -
I can feel it on the tip of my tongue, can’t say it,
lest it slip away.
Later she spells it out when I ask,
Next to her number.
She puts mine on a colorful piece of construction
paper
That she pulls from her purse
Right before she disappears.
ARIEL HAIRSTON
Ariel Hairston is in the Core Liberal Studies
Program at New York University and spent her first year studying in London.
Bible
Leather-bound,
white, and covered in a thin film of dust. It's faded like those jeans you've
washed fifteen times too many, the ones that barely fit but you keep in the back
of your closet.
Through the
haze, you can just barely see the glint of gold letters on its surface: B- I -B
-L -E. If you were to touch it, you'd realize the word is engraved deep within
the fabric of the cover. Even in the darkness of the room, under the layers of
years, you know what it is.
If you flipped the cover back, you'd hear
the faint crack of a book that's never been opened. It was never meant to be
opened. As a child, you shifted through three different homes, caught in the
blur of changing addresses, land-lines, and living rooms. In the midst of this
fluid want for stability sat the unmoving Bible on display for everyone to see.
Somewhere between your first boyfriend and
your first car, someone packed it away. They carefully wrapped it in thick
bubble-wrap, stuffing it into a recycled brown box. But it was never unpacked.
You happened to stumble upon it years
later, haphazardly cutting the box open with the expectation of finding the old
Christmas lights. You held the Bible in your hands, surprised at how heavy it
had become. Leather-bound, white, covered in a thin film of dust.
SHANNAGH ROWLAND
Shannagh Rowland is from Ireland and is studying at New York University.
She plans to major in English Literature and minor in a media subject.
Nostalgia
And yet
All this eternity
and youth,
Love and noise
Means seldom to a
young heart,
But is simply
immeasurable to homely bones.
Tilled skin,
ancient limbs
Whose lives are now
antique cabinets.
The skeletons are
locked within.
All we have are
butterflies in jars.
All poems published online with permission of the authors, who retain their copyright.
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