This piece was originally published in Quarto’s 2022 Spring Print.
Illustration by Ashley Yung
I
I receive letters in spades, slipping through
buttons and backstreets. The feathered air
settles bluntly, a vegetable knife upon
the city, there is nothing to do. Scholarly attendant
I pluck out afternoons from downtown
cinemas, golden-hair women weeping out
cottages or dangling orifices, foreign rivers,
domestic rivers. There is walking to be done,
emptiness to be washed and discarded, smoke
to rise and trains to catch. I wouldn’t dwell
but life gets awfully narrow and even quiet comes
inside the smooth pearl of a sound, a street
shout skipping up through the windows.
II
An ill Sunday morning. Somewhere deep below
the libidinal nonsense, broken glass train
platforms, and omniscient scar tissue is a
bleeding organ. Something purpling.
A shanty house propped up with museums
only to be toppled by verse. Lying martyred
at 3pm the same searing light of heaven that
must have appeared to Joan as she sighed and
sparked shows glinting on my windowpane.
It has very little to say to me, except perhaps
that I should be talking coffee rather than
crucifixion. Glory is rarely prudent and
rarer still brief, so honored I rose and let
my uneasy concert play and brew and play.
III
You’ve made me translucent, and everyone
on the subway can read through my skin
like some cheap paperback. I suppose you’re
also responsible for the messages, the lamplight
rain in the evenings, the architect of this autumn
romantic. I will wrap my favorite bench,
intersection, in wax paper and send it off express
for when my name begins to dissolve on
the tongue. A paperweight to anchor your nights.
Forgive me. I think I’m a corner newsstand
philosopher slipping around on skates when
I talk to you this way, but you’ve left me
with no other language than the low drones of summer.
Horribly improper, but perhaps something could be
corrected if you slipped a finger underneath my collar…
IV
A woman asked me, as I crossed to the park,
how to get to Charles Street, and worst of all
I knew and didn’t have the words to say.
A kitchen sink apocalypse was forming on
the horizon, all rocky beaches and Freud
and ink under fingernails. Dreams play out
coyly, fair-weather test subjects, while some of
us rot in underground contemplation. Maybe
the strain is in the attempt, or I am merely
poisoned by a world folded in on itself.
I’ll be a greeting card lover—it seems so
much easier. It’s all breathless pennies now,
vending machines, bruising dawns, and it
all comes much too late. If I haven’t evaporated
by Friday, come see me. Bring luck and wit.
C. G. Coleman (they/them) is a sophomore at Barnard studying English and Philosophy. They are from the DC area and passionate about new wave films, love letters, kitchen sink dramas, film photography, 60s music, and long walks around the city. Find them on Instagram at @beingoflight03.