Midtown Analysis

after Lorca’s ‘A Poet in New York’

Some of those edge-of-the-precipice
people are circling

smiling at breasts
asking directions to places of worship.

Sunlight glares through gaps in metal towers.
You are always walking

towards the Norman Foster building.
Men rise again

from a hole in the street.
A red hand flashes.
 
You reach for a cocktail
swallow a cab.

The Stock Exchange is not yet
covered in moss

but everyone’s timing is off.
The sense of scale is mortifying.

A man wants to explore your bag/
your heart/your mind

You lie upside down on his couch.
Vermont Clothbound Cheddar fills your throat.

He blames the axial
pull of the vertical.

You choke. He suggests
you try to be less literal.



Niall

i.m. Niall McCabe

In the space between two worlds
I poach an egg. It’s early.
I have fasted all night, a long night,
spent mainly talking with my spirit guide,
or rather, listening.
And when I say spirit guide, I mean
Niall, the Omagh boy from Drama School,
who used to be all thunder in the pub.

He wore his cloud-mass like a crown,
daring you to come and try and break it,
but in the ...