Bushwick: Latex Flat

By D. Nurkse D. Nurkse

2001

Sadness of just-painted rooms.

We clean our tools

meticulously, as if currying horses:

the little nervous sash brush

to be combed and primped,

the fat old four-inchers

that lap up space

to be wrapped and groomed,

the ceiling rollers,

the little pencils

that cover nailheads

with oak gloss,

to be counted and packed:

camped on our dropsheets

we stare across gleaming floors

at the door and beyond it

the old city full of old rumors

of conspiracies, gunshots, market crashes:

with a little mallet

we tap our lids closed,

holding our breath, holding our lives

in suspension for a moment:

an extra drop will ruin everything.

Poem copyright ©2007 by D. Nurkse, whose newest book of poetry The Border Kingdom, is forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. Poem reprinted from Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn, ed., Julia Spicher Kasdorf & Michael Tyrrell, New York University Press, 2007, by permission of D. Nurkse.

Biography

D. Nurkse is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including The Rules of Paradise (2001), The Fall (2003), and The Border Kingdom (2008). His parents escaped Nazi Europe during World War II—his Estonian father worked for the League of Nations in Vienna, his mother was an artist—and moved to New York. Nurkse’s family moved back to live in Europe for a number of years, returning to the United States around the time of the . . .

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