Bryant Park
Posted by Garrett Carey | Filed under Poetry, Print
I don’t know what a girl is
sometimes,
the small of a back
peeking, shy,
a secret spoken in an outside voice;
a good day,
when one should decide
to breathe upon you,
seems foreign, magical.
I see her, lying,
testing the cold grass toe-first
in an invisible patch of Manhattan -
jazz whispers in the background
like a jealous ex-girlfriend,
a movie scene.
I am sure I see her
a little uncomfortable
at the peak of my
dream-woven everything
but I don’t really know what
“seeing”
means.
Kissing is easier. You can feel
the borders
when you reach them,
map them.
Everywhere
there is a misplaced fantasy
forlorn. The hoola-hoopers
are close, but oblivious
and almost Burtonesque
in their brazen eccentricity.
The watchers are
watching. The listeners
are listening. In three minutes,
a siren
will nudge its way between us
as if the world resented being forgotten
even for a moment.
This is a girl.
It is a good day,
or
at the very least,
I think it is.
