“Some Words...”
//
thirteenth day
a loom
a rag
a rug
the sky
a skydyed
blue theres
always a ticket
says the man
taking tickets
//
eighteenth day
today it is 92 degrees
the long line for the rockaways
a woman says the city
takes seats from trains
to put on these boats & i know it
i know accountants back in my office
in the middle of america i had
a picture of the formula for capital
tacked up on the wall next to the
lightswitch & all day i drew data
maps on the walls in felt tip
of sons of mechanics
sons of farmers sons of army
down long low certificate
hallways past zinnia past red
mulch to gap factory back
the school & up to cricket front
circle circuit on the bottom
of each map i wrote what everyone
says who knows capitals not capital
in your pocket so map so fable
so see it move from my window i
think the green lawn would look so
nice if we let grass grow long brown
//
nineteenth day
heat & no shade & no trees
& the street looks upside down
women wear floral shirts
a man hands me a one dollar bill
& both my shoes have holes in the sole
overdressed on south street
underdressed by front i walk up
the eight blocks south to front to water
to pearl to hanover to william to broad
to new to broadway to trinity trinity
is a church like a church is a king
soot refers to soot this town
was built wait slaves built this town
trinity owns this town & any whale
that washes up to 14th street but 14th
street keeps washing up slaves
built this street just below the land
of the blacks untribed by wall
or wolf free but for the wall
& the wolf i look at my uncles
cherokee feather want to ask
do we have some black blood do
we have indian blood but i know
the answer get home google
sandals then womens cutest
sandals then cutest sexiest
sandals summer 17 & fall asleep
//
twentieth day
i wake up in the middle of the night
& look out & see B working still
on the couch say sorry I thought
your foot was a goose & fall
back asleep which i don’t remember
til he tells me in the morning
laughing on his way in the shower
i fry eggs crack rind watermelon write
ants see ants/ whale sea whale/ ants see whale
on scraps of paper & read it to him
through the bathroom door he trades
one year for 150000 dollars & i stay
making breakfast read him scraps
of poems & tonight i walk from wall
street to the hudson where a poet
tells me the constraint is where
the ecstatic come from & i remember
J telling me about that poem thats just
a list of names z is a rich poet y is a rich poet x
is a rich poet & at home livings the constraint
but here maybe i just cant see them yet
a german poet tells me writing in english
is her constraint and i wonder where she
got her earrings & if i wrote in other
languages would i be able to write about
more beautiful things battery park is full up of
fireflies & men with clipboards looking up
from artillery to tops of buildings scraping
that sky tonight that all look like jewel boxes &
the breeze is so nice & i can see from one scale
to the other from here remember the night
at home fireflies synchronize their firefly
lights & how big all of us get how limitless
for a flash & at rest & loose & solvent
//
twenty-fourth day
the water is rough
& mystics is just another
way to say famous
what did lorca know about
a man turned to thing of waste
A blasts out from blackallacia
yo this is what it looks like wipipo
when you throw your people away
& in brooklyn ten of us on a roof
worth all together in dollars
a hundred million dollars
& drinking smokey mezcal
one as a boy watched a french painter
paint his silk walls & who would not know
that now he decides things with money
one makes 40000 in dollars for one night
to take one picture to post so far my lorca
The pepper trees up and died
taking their light-lit little berries
Camels, flesh-lashed, left too
and the cob swan lifts the white sky in his beak
It was a time for brittle things
the firefox-scratched eye, the laminated cat
the decayed iron of the great bridges
and the perfect silence because cork
in white ink unless this is printed on black
paper then it is my Lorca in black & since
it cant come through i can say it plain
the water is rough today theres no away
away today all the jokes are in red
& of course in due course all comes back
Body of Water
About the Artist
Sarah Passino is a Nashville poet living in Brooklyn. Recently, her work has appeared in Broome Street Review, Poetry Daily, and The Hopkins Review and was awarded the Rachel Wetzsteon Poetry Prize for the 92nd Street Y. She writes occasional Tiny Letters about writing days, bread committees, and what love looks like in public. She has worked as a professor, an organizer, and currently works as an editor. She is on instagram @Small Takes.
excerpts from “Some Words From 40-Some Days Before the Eclipse Translating Lorca’s Danza de la Muerte By Writing It In Rice Flour Around 40 Wall Street Like A Crab Or Like a Whale But For Sure For the Ants & For Sure For a Sum of the _Waste_”