We sort of forgot about our dream to some day visit New York by Jay Miller
To Patrycja
We will be here again. I take it you think otherwise.
It’s fine really, I’m reaching. The truth is none of this really matters.
Hold me not for dear life, not even just for survival.
If you want to survive, you grab onto an aluminum bar,
maybe, or some sort of crevasse. Stay here with me.
You want to be with me you tell me so gingerly.
I don’t think all that much. I like poems that rhyme and gunpowder.
Together, we yellow. I stifle. You green.
I outreckon our bookie and hedge my bets on the outlier.
We imagine ourselves without reimagining our language but I know
In a parallel universe, we take the stage in French theatre.
I dare not cleave my soul and expose it to Faust or whomever.
Blow my dice and read Wordsworth aloud to me,
I want to feel the wind in the trees and a cool summer’s breeze.
I see what you see. Our thoughts speak like mah-jong.
There’s a feng-shui in everything between river and breath.
I go silent, lay flat in the street.
Then laughter washes over you, I feel the sun beams on my face.
Cars halt, drivers shout and stare, klaxons
going off; I place my hand squarely into yours.
september 3rd, 2020Jay Miller is a poet who lives in Montreal. His advice to young writers is to stay young and whenever you attend a book launch or poetry reading, ask the authors out for beers afterwards. He edits The Lit Quarterly (litquarterly.ca), speaks French, and has long hair like a walking photograph, which is not to say photogenic.