POEM
The Dead Remember Brooklyn
It is the great arguments
we are proud of, over a nibbled peach,
hair in the comb, a faulty lube job;
the reconciliations were always naked
in borrowed rooms, sometimes in Queens
or Staten Island, we touched each other
shyly—we reminded each other
of loneliness and funk and beautiful pigeons
with oil-slick necks, cooing bitterly—
but there we lost each other
in forgiveness; keeping score,
being wounded even in triumph,
walking home down leafy avenues
etched with the faint double line
of extinct trolleys, caressing
carved hearts under a sheen of sap
with a ragged nail, sleeping alone,
choosing the dream of betrayal,
entering by the wide door
and waking dead—there
we were superb. In Brooklyn
we held our own.
Source: Poetry (January 2008).
This poem originally appeared in the January 2008 issue of Poetry.
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D. Nurkse is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including The Rules of . . . MORE »
