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Readings in Contemporary Poetry

Adam Fitzgerald and Simone White

Tuesday, December 6, 2016, 6:30 pm, Dia Chelsea

Event Details
Tuesday, December 6, 2016, 6:30 pm

Dia:Chelsea
535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor
New York City 

Readings in Contemporary Poetry curator, Vincent Katz provided an introduction for the evening's reading.

Free for Dia members; $10 general admission; $6 admission for students and seniors 

Advance ticket purchases recommended. Tickets are also available for purchase at the door, subject to availability. 

Adam Fitzgerald

Adam Fitzgerald is a poet and teacher who lives and works in New York. He received his MFA from Columbia University, New York. His debut collection of poems, The Late Parade, was published by Liveright in 2013. Fitzgerald teaches creative writing and literature at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, the New School, New York, and New York University. 

Time After Time

After Cyndi Lauper

I’m in the barricade hearing the clock thickening you.
     Autumn encircles a confusion that’s nothing new.
Flash back to warring eyes almost letting me drown.

Out of which, a picture of me walking in a foreign head.
     I can’t hear what you said. Then you say: Cold room,
the second that life unwinds. A tinctured vase returns

to grass. Secrets doled out deep inside a drum beat out
     of time. Whatever you said was ghostly slow like
a second hand unwinding by match light. Lying back 

to the wheel, I shirked confusion. You already knew.
     Suitcases surround me. You picture me too far ahead.
Yet I can’t hear what you’ve said. You say: Doldrums, 

some secondhand wine. Love, you knew my precincts.
     The stone house turned out black, the scenic tunics
were deep inside. Who said home? Oh, I fall behind. 

That very secret height blinds. Lying like a diamond,
     the cock-thickening of you: hunchbacked arms, eyes
left behind. You’ll picture me walking far, far ahead.

I hear what you’ve done. You said: Go slow. I feebly
     bleed out. Matthew’s sermon turned out to be glass.
I wander in windows soft as Sour Patch. No rewind.

But something is out of touch and you, you’re Sinbad.
     That second date totally mine. Lying in a vacuum,
the thickening plot thinks of you. The future’s not new.

touchdown. Lights. All those celebrity behinds.
     A suitcase full of weeds. You picture me coming to.
You: too close to me to hear what you’ve already said.

Then you say: The second wind unwinds. Doves whistle,
     halving their dovely backs, watching out windows to see
if I’m okay. See it, the dulcet moment? I’m like thicket

tinkering for you. Fusion nothing you knew. Flash back
     to seagull-beguiled eyes. Sometimes talking to a barren
lad. Such music so unbearably droll. The hand is mine.

Random picture frames off the darkness. A Turing machine?
     Scotch-taping through windows, stolen from deep inside
rum-beaded thyme. You say also: Behind sequins & hinds . . .

And I’m in the barricade hearing the clock thickening you.
     Clematis enclosures, walking with news, pollinated by a
secondary grief, while something reminds you of our love.

Simone White

Simone White is a poet who lives and works in New York. She received her MFA from the New School, New York. White is the author of numerous publications, including Of Being Dispersed (Futurepoem Books, 2016) and Unrest (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2013). 

Motherhood is a State of Hypervigilance

Open arms gathering all so wide to hold everyone horizontally growing, this way, flat in this way capturing each

 pellet            stream

danger, failure to possess 
holding what cannot be held
natural, weightless impact of pressure in tons

separate,              prostrate time
the weather of wails
appetites

a thin sliver of wax or wood between one time and another what is the impact
between one time and another more time and more succeeding separations caroling he is coming

 

 

Books

Photo: Don Stahl

Readings in Contemporary Poetry: An Anthology

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