ISSUE 3
 

Alexander Loukopoulos

 

North Star

 

Manhattan island was born at night.

This deathbed of forest drew from spring

a winter soul, and — look, its cold hard face

in the windows as you drive past,

schlepping history on its back — here,

the blasé boys gathered like

snow on the sills, to forge steel

from ice. Listen to their pistons clanging,

their lives bounding the rooftops,

carving out strange latitudes overhead

for all the world to see.

 

Hush, hush! The engines have all gone

silent. The Hudson rounds its amours; it fears

the season has gone sallow, and the flâneurs

scatter, for they’ve lost their north star:

It seems the past is no longer here.

 

Alone, the city walks the city streets,

each ill movement a want for rest

or stillness, lazing past its zenith,

its dominion waning —

a comet crowning the horizon,

then fading into dark.

 

​
 

My First Reading

 

Chinatown summons its underground champions.

The boys down there shake hands

and laugh like bending rivers

feigning importance.

 

I stand at the mirror, an artist

practicing the art of mimicry,

rehearsing profundities – where

do you live? what do you do? – between rites,

sandbag thoughts avalanche stale

repetitious breaths.

 

Narcissus pillars the underground.

The boys, wind-whipped egos stripped

of wide berth, trading their hearts

for mahogany, study superlatives;

their champion of champions beckoning,

eager ears, listening –

their platitudes masks for intellectual warfare.

 

Sentences honed to slip under the skin and burst

like killers through the morning’s eye

while the rest like fire

leap through exits to lick solid,

laconic air.

​