love
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when someone is missing, their possessions take on a new meaning. so where I run into these things, I begin to make songs – I can feel your empty t-shirt, but I can’t feel you I know your spoon as well as I know your mouth you have the look of the bed you rose…
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in the hood of being beautiful/the N holds its breath like snow/soundless as disco/I search out the window for you/while we’re still close enough to Surf Avenue/I know I’m failing/running out of time/it’s me on the inside/and you on the out/I open Notes to write you a letter/the train seems to sigh/please let’s never die…
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winter arrives early and takes its place at the window. the sky this afternoon has filled the air with snowflakes. there’s a single ray of light now in my little apartment, pale and thin as the subway rail carrying the Q … from Prospect Park to 7 Av, then Atlantic, then DeKalb.
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leave a bike outside long enough in New York City, and it will probably be stripped of its parts, left for dead. was the bicycle’s actual cause of death heartbreak from not being ridden around? because only moving does it have a soul. most of the songs I write tell and retell a story of…
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I bought a new guitar today. well, not really new: an old Gibson J-45, rich and deep on the low E and A strings, with round shoulders, a wine-red finish and tortoise teardrop pick guard. she was standing in a city pawn shop, beautifully abandoned. she came with an exile’s suitcase and a belly filled…
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this bird comes every day and stops at the branch to sing for an hour or two, as if it were absentminded, trying to remember the melody from the day before. that’s all the bird does. nothing makes it happier. it wants me to listen to it sing as it leans over to my window. its honey voice’s precision, filtered through…
cookie nieves 