Tag: Glenn Bach

From “Atlas” by Glenn Bach

Williamsburg Bridge
in the morning Manhattan bound:
the trees of the East
River park a thicket
of brambles, a brown blur
of winter, the sun behind you
a crushed daisy, hushed ferry cuts
a sword blade along the surface
of the river, the J train above your
heads a halo that goes and goes.

Williamsburg Bridge
in the evening Brooklyn bound:
a tug nudges a river barge,
you stood front window / front car
on the J train Brooklyn bound,
the underground
unfolding before you, graffiti-
thick and glimpses of squatters
and no sun forever.

And in the morning the same
rooftops and factories of Brooklyn,
the same barge again cutting
through a Hopper-painted
backdrop of skyscrapers,
green ribbon edging the Lower
East Side clockwork,
an ancient landscape
still and wise as the Hudson
Highlands, falling and falling
into Manhattan, an island
surrounded by water.

Originally from Southern California, Glenn Bach now lives in the Doan Brook watershed of Cleveland, Ohio. His major project, Atlas, is a long poem about place and our (mis)understanding of the world. Excerpts have appeared in jubilat, Otoliths, Plumwood Mountain and others. He documents his work at glennbach.com and @AtlasCorpus.

From “Atlas” by Glenn Bach

The fall of New York,
leaving the canyons of artifice
and the calculus of blooms
as we walk in our sleep, fireflies
in cupped palms, bees and their
drowning, this week a whirlwind
of weather slipped in
through an open window as keys fit
the steeplechase of locks
and shoulders find their coats
of Broadway and 115th,
flipped collars and checked
scarves framing fleeting expressions
at play across wind-bitten cheeks,
dispersing the thin threads
of words captured and elongated,
made firm in hand-set type, folded
and slipped into jacket pockets.

We breathe the runoff and the dust
of scuffling shoes, effluvia of insects,
hair growing imperceptible as bark,
cherry blossoms like WWII flak
in the sky.

Bricks across knees,
new words invented for what we see
emerging from suspended animation,
the light years of this continent
as we sew the holes in our pockets,
fill them with stones from both oceans.

But here the umber canyons, throbs
of gold taxicabs and all the trains full
of strap-hanging figures
with bodega-bought flowers
wrapped in cones of plastic,
children glancing up
at the giants
towering above them.

Originally from Southern California, Glenn Bach now lives in the Doan Brook watershed of Cleveland, Ohio. His major project, Atlas, is a long poem about place and our (mis)understanding of the world. Excerpts have appeared in jubilat, Otoliths, Plumwood Mountain and others. He documents his work at glennbach.com and @AtlasCorpus.