2 Poems by Seán Griffin
Arakawa Under the Bridge
for Hikaru Nakamura
Walk the white like between
the shoulder and traffic. The Bronx
River has flooded. Geese paddle
on the temporary lakes. Let’s hop
the rumble strips and settle the banks.
We’ll live as we feel we’re meant to,
and if you wear a mask because
that face is you, then I won’t point
out the rubber smell or split seam revealing
your sweaty nape. I’ll forgo lipstick and drink
red wine instead, writing verse,
my contribution. Let’s plant a garden to feed
those who’ll come, because they’ve nowhere
but here. The strawberries we’ve planted start
as little white flowers, daytime stars
on the ground.
for Hikaru Nakamura
Walk the white like between
the shoulder and traffic. The Bronx
River has flooded. Geese paddle
on the temporary lakes. Let’s hop
the rumble strips and settle the banks.
We’ll live as we feel we’re meant to,
and if you wear a mask because
that face is you, then I won’t point
out the rubber smell or split seam revealing
your sweaty nape. I’ll forgo lipstick and drink
red wine instead, writing verse,
my contribution. Let’s plant a garden to feed
those who’ll come, because they’ve nowhere
but here. The strawberries we’ve planted start
as little white flowers, daytime stars
on the ground.
Finches
chirrups bring attention away from broken glass and chicken bones on the eroded sidewalk up
under the awning of the empty storefront, once a mom and pops. A finch’s head pokes
out along with some frayed grass ends, and it chips at its family fluttering around the entrance of
their home.
They don’t know it’s slated for demolition. They don’t know a twenty-something story
commercial/residential building will go up to replace the row of single story closed shops.
No doubt, no notice was posted for them to vacate. Why would it be done? The bird is the
symbol of freedom, they could just fly. Yet we’re nomads too. We shuffle like cards
in a magic trick mostly because of work. We are our jobs, but these finches don’t seem to have jobs.
Soon they won’t have a home either, and the building will come down, and
maybe they’ll fly away, and they will have to build a new nest in some other forgotten area
with forgotten materials, and god forbid it become up and coming,
and maybe a salesman from the Chrysler dealer won’t stand under their awning, smoking, and look
up at them wondering what use they have.
chirrups bring attention away from broken glass and chicken bones on the eroded sidewalk up
under the awning of the empty storefront, once a mom and pops. A finch’s head pokes
out along with some frayed grass ends, and it chips at its family fluttering around the entrance of
their home.
They don’t know it’s slated for demolition. They don’t know a twenty-something story
commercial/residential building will go up to replace the row of single story closed shops.
No doubt, no notice was posted for them to vacate. Why would it be done? The bird is the
symbol of freedom, they could just fly. Yet we’re nomads too. We shuffle like cards
in a magic trick mostly because of work. We are our jobs, but these finches don’t seem to have jobs.
Soon they won’t have a home either, and the building will come down, and
maybe they’ll fly away, and they will have to build a new nest in some other forgotten area
with forgotten materials, and god forbid it become up and coming,
and maybe a salesman from the Chrysler dealer won’t stand under their awning, smoking, and look
up at them wondering what use they have.
Seán Griffin received an MFA in Creative Writing from Manhattanville College. Seán's writing has appeared in The Southampton Review, Selcouth Station Press, Impossible Archetype, Dust Poetry Magazine, Cathexis Northwest Press, with poetry in The Mud Season Review, Sonic Boom, and The Hellebore forthcoming. Seán teaches writing at Concordia College of New York, is an editor for Inkwell Literary Journal, and lives in New York with three dogs.