Bildungsroman: Donations
So in goes the broken hose that wrapped
your ankle and swept you wet to the grass, and in
goes the cylinder of loose oolong you had
held under you nose like roses, and the pin that had
kept your newest note on the corkboard, wrapped
your wall with doings and goings, and in
goes your favorite pen with so many words still waiting in
it, and when this box is opened, no hands that had
held these things will hold them and no stories will wrap
them in myth. Just hose, tea, pin, pen. Unwrapped. Had.
Bildungsroman: Integer
I am alone and you are
dead. The kissing booths are empty
at Coney Island. The oldies
stations keep forgetting
when they are, but play anyway. Sometimes
tomorrow is a long time
ago. Sometimes it is 1948 in the projects
of the Bronx where this
story started and where part of me did
too. It is humid and someone is
playing the drums. It’s an aggressive
waltz. The windows hate the air
outside, but hate the heat inside more.
Someone brings a very small
white undershirt for you to grow into. And I
grew from you and into it and through
it. The pigeons were witnesses. And then
the gulls. So many skies ahead. I hate that
we can count them now, that we can say
that one number.
John A. Nieves (a poet of Puerto Rican/Taino and Ashkenazi descent) has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as American Poetry Review, Iowa Review, 32 Poems, Southern Review, and Hopkins Review. His first book, Curio, won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award Judge’s Prize. He is an Associate Professor of English at Salisbury University and an Editor of The Shore Poetry and a 2024 Pushcart Prize Winner.