Sue Landers
Blizzard
It’s too much it’s just too much too much ai-powered war machine too much data center
drought too much doge dude deposition too much malice too much gun too much
border the brutalist plaza too much zero sum game bad faith argument too much binary
too much grift too much rent too much displacement detention too much mourning in
Gaza in Dilley too much depravity so much memory so much history repeating so much
betting on death I’m betting on mourning doves balanced in wild mulberry trees as the
snow falls chaotic nesters building homes anywhere and quick windowsill or wire
tender-feathered wing-whistlers calling out to connect common and plain let’s say
soothe let’s say their soft coo soothes let’s say they are enough
Dissonance
And how was it that only after leaving the checkpoint where the armed man in the
tactical vest looked at the real me and my real ID did I notice how much my legs were
shaking releasing the tension they had held while being examined however briefly by the
armed man considering me and the others seeking to move beyond this series of
chokepoints to get away for reasons more myriad than any armed man could ever
imagine could he have even imagined that just last night I was in the park by my
apartment the night so temperate cherries just starting to bloom two hours before the
president’s threatened genocide was scheduled to commence and an egret emerged
from Prospect Park lake with a fish in its mouth wriggling a full body shake in front of the
small crowd of people who had gathered to capture the moment for their feed while my
feed delivered streams of people outside utility companies in Tehran proclaiming their
realness proclaiming lay down your arms until the whims of an armed man shifted and
there was a short exhalation of breath followed by a sharp intake of breath as Israel
dropped bombs on Lebanon where in 1982 Darwish wished for five minutes between
shells to make coffee and years later or days I would be drinking coffee too but in San
Diego beside birds of paradise and bottlebrush plumeria in the air not so far from where
four astronauts floated softly down to earth on candy striped balloons from the far side
of a moon they seek to mine for empire petty empire this is how it is inside your
collapse.
Free
Past the sludge eggs and RVs,
Trisha’s deli, hydraulic cranes,
this feral pocket of Brooklyn,
alive without restraint,
refusing to be tamed—
Newtown Creek—
and a salty vessel,
all teak and curve,
engine like a sewing machine—
Bitsa—
a bitta this, a bitta that—
says its captain, Travis,
a rigger, a slinger, welder
in the autonomous zone–
living inside a project,
survival without rent, afloat
this tidal arm of the estuary—
vast and intricate,
all basin, bay, cove,
harbor, river, kill—
it’s volatile on the creek,
as in, having the ability to fly—
cormorant and crust punk,
ooze ship and tug—
Captain Travis, an emissary,
rowed me down the creek
on his tender dinghy
past the squats and sea cans,
dead tracks, marine debris—
all this water remembers
could never be remembered
by me, I think, but I will remember
what I saw tacked inside his cabin,
the sign by the settee that read:
we will find our freedom together.
Sue Landers is a poet and pedestrian in Brooklyn. Her latest poetry collection, What to Carry Into the Future, emerged from riding every New York City subway line end to end. Her poems have appeared in Poem-A-Day, The Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. More at suelanders.com.