Announcements

Emily Gordon

The new rules are that everything 

has to hurt all the time. 

Do you call 911 when you hear shots,

or firecrackers, New Yorkers’ ordinary July,

when black men are being shot by cops?

You exchange one island for another,

but they’re all inaccessible,

except the last one,

which you can only reach by boat

painted by a newly dead man,

manned by a blank, nude woman. 

What happens when you get there,

that grayish point when you say,

Well, that does it for my looks,

a little sooner than I thought. 

Love gives you only so many shots. 

Or, that’s okay, I didn’t really finish

what I started. Someone else 

will make it past the doorman,

unhook the velvet rope. 

I have a future in me, 

but it feels like a tumor.