Two of my more recent pieces are published in Vol 5 Is 2 of In Parentheses. You can purchase an online copy or a print copy here.
One edit regarding the poem “teaching her a lesson.” The last line of the poem as written in this issue should be disregarded. It’s carried over from another piece on the previous page. The end of my poem is the second to last line. I have contacted the editor and they are working to make this change.
“I came here to see it…”
they say she is a city full of
all those good things
opportunity
success
adventure
love
bright lights
mean I can learn to
be bright again too
“…with new eyes…”
like reading your same favorite book
the same time again each year
and realizing how different you are
each time you encounter it
I am a new creature now
in a way I wasn’t
last time I saw her
this time I need this wildness
my body craves her streets
her crowded subways
her tall towers packed together
her old and new juxtaposed
“…and feel it.”
she taught me that I can still do this
that my tenacity is still intact
that I can move beyond merely enduring
that I can get drunk on wine
with my parents and take a
late night walk through the West Village
that I can write my phone number
on a napkin and slide it across
the bar to a British man
that I can take a cab through
the city alone and confidently
get where I’m going
“It’s up to you, New York.”
she was the climax
of a summer of adventures
to remember where my core is
among all this debris
because New York knows
what it’s like to try to
find yourself again
among debris
and rise from it in the most
poetic and heart wrenching of ways
Brenna Lakeson 