Poetry: “A Song of Revival in New York City, While My Father is Asleep” by Alan Chazaro
A Song of Revival in New York City, While My Father is Asleep
Last night, I chased jungle birds and found
my way through a crooked lens. Tomorrow,
I promise I will unbury my fingers
from yesterday’s losses. A truth: I’m beginning
to feel slightly unspiraled
as these flowers go by, aren’t you?
I’m arrested and unable to rest. Something
like a flooded subway station.
Something similar to my iPhone
with a cracked screen. Confession: I want more
than Travis Scott’s limited Nike releases
at Flight Club. I want an intimate cartography,
a mapping of irregular terrain. This is a matter
of fact. We are a portrait of a skyline-
in-progress. I need you to know: where there is
summer, there is also snow. I’m speechless
when I have booze-juice in my fancy cocktail
glass. That’s a fancy way of saying
nothing, and everything. Meanwhile, this country
is shrinking with each breath,
our masks barely on. Yes:
I care about the future as much as I wonder
about the señora selling mangos and strawberries
on a corner in Jackson Heights. Suggestion: Let us
return to our Pacific shores. Let us dream
about magnificent victories in our
thundersleep. Do not wake
yet. I am still here, holding on.
About Alan Chazaro
Alan Chazaro is the author of This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album (Black Lawrence Press, 2019), Piñata Theory (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), and Notes from the Eastern Span of the Bay Bridge (Ghost City Press, 2021). He is a graduate of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley and a former Lawrence Ferlinghetti Fellow at the University of San Francisco. He writes for SFGATE, KQED, Datebook, Oaklandside, 48Hills, and other publications, and is on Twitter and IG being a useless pocho millennial @alan_chazaro.