April 1, 2025 • 29 mins
QUEENSBOUND is a poetry project by, for, and about Queens. QUEENSBOUND 2020 is our second edition. Around half of the poems in our 2020 edition were recorded before COVID touched down in Queens in March 2020. This edition of the project reflects Queens before and during the early days of the pandemic, allowing our audience to hear the city and travel around Queens by listening to these poems. 2020 contributors include: Nadia Q. Ahmad, Amy M. Alvarez, Pichchenda Bao, Ryan Black, Nana Brew-Hammond, Francisco Delgado, Ariel Francisco, Ellen Hagan, Kimiko Hahn, Robert Ostrom, Bushra Rehman, Sahar Romani, Jackie Sherbow, Mariahedessa Ekere Tallie, and Sweta Srivastava Vikram. QUEENSBOUND 2020 selections were made by editorial board members Abeer Y. Hoque, Jared Harél, Joseph O. Legaspi, and founder KC Trommer. To see the map, hear the poems, and learn more about our contributors and about future train readings, go to queensbound.com.
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(00:01):
This is QUEENSBOUND.
So which borough is this? Thisis Queens. This is Queens.
Queens the best borough.
This is my community andI love it. Hi everyone.
This is KC Trommer, founder ofQUEENSBOUND, a poetry project by, for,
and about Queens.
This project launched in 2018with a celebratory reading on the Flushing-bound 7
(00:25):
Train, which readersand writers alike loved.
We intended on sharingour 2020 edition in April,
2020 with another trainmeeting. But as you know,
COVID had other plans for all of us.
Around half of the poems in our 2020edition were recorded before Covid
(00:45):
touchdown in Queens. So when wefinished this edition of the project,
it reflected Queens before and during theearly days of the pandemic and allowed
our listeners to hear the city and travelaround Queens by listening to these
poems.
This edition includes 16 emerging andesteemed poets from across the borough
writing about their neighborhoods.
(01:06):
If you're curious about which stationstops correspond with the poems,
go to queensbound.com and find the poemsmarked in green on our Queens subway
map. Have a listen and pleaseenjoy QUEENSBOUND 2020.
This is a Queensbound M train.
The next stop is Elmhurst Avenue.
(01:29):
My name is Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond.The poem is called Packed.
You can't fit your country in a suitcase,
so you buy it in a groceryaisle of improvised ingredients.
You fill your pots and your pans with it,
your neighbors' apartments with smellsthat take you back to where you were
borne and why you left. You hang it onyour walls, put it on your fire escape,
your own little temple of familiars.Youpaint it on your faceand scream for the
team and your goalsfor your children,
enunciating every syllableso they neverforgetso you never forget there is
another country with your namestagged to it like a suitcase.
(02:16):
This is a Forest Hills71st Avenue bound R Train.
The next stop is JacksonHeights Roosevelt Avenue.
I'm Sahar Romani readingmy poem, Diversity Plaza.
Briefly,
I shake off my anxiety portalout of my head into the
(02:39):
plaza lit with uncles high from slow talk
and beetle nut as youngwomen FaceTime lovers perhaps
long distance in aHimalayan city sidewalks tea
tipsy with strangers whostroll in a grammar of laughter
I once heard in the mothercountry and down the street
(03:03):
mannequins dressed uplike it's holiday royal in
sequin golden embroidery asif we're at a wedding party
as if I have no papers tograde tonight over calendared
tomorrow with departmentmeetings at least along
74th Street a subwoofer bumps out
(03:26):
a qawwali a trick to forget itsnearly winter elixir that suspends
even daylight departureSpell of good company walks
me home tonight.
This is a Flushing MainStreet bound 7 local train.
The next stop is 111th Street.
(03:50):
ACQ - A Tribe Called Queens by MA
Dennis.
To find out your adult film actor name,
combine the names of your firstchildhood pet and the street you grew up
on.
My name is Dino Mexico and I come fromA Tribe Called Queens the birthplace of
Run-DMC and Ladies Love CoolJames my 3rd grade teacher,
Mrs. James sent me tothe principal's office;
at P.S. 36 a Cadillac-sized dark-skinnedmahogany desk kept Mr. Downey from
getting his hands on mehis faceliquid red like canned beets,
promising expulsion and expellingthe n-word-hard R (no fabric softener
softness)-you never forget the day yourtiki torch gets extinguished:the tribe
has spoken. A Tribe CalledQueens a melting pot:
Italian Ices in Corona Jamaicanbeef patties in Jamaica,
Queens gyros and empanadas in JacksonHeights-What a non-Halal revelation!
Learning that being born at Long IslandJewish hospital didn't absolve me from
being Gentile-here,
where a Fine Yiddish-speaking nanny wentfrom a bridal shop in Flushing all the
way to syndicationinQueens, home of kings:
Kevin James to John Coltraneeven LongIsland decided to build its City here,
this place of beats,
rhymes and life bustling with people'sinstinctive travelson alphanumeric soup
buses and trains searching for thepaths of rhythm back on the Boulevard Of
Lindenan expelled 3rd grader soughthealing in Hostess Ho-Ho's shoplifted from
Famous Corner Deli,
but got caught five finger-handed bya beer-bellied man FEAR and paranoia,
like a virus,
gripped me yet I broke free as heyelled at me"Get the hell outta here!
And don't come back!" but I will alwayscome back to Main Street and Avenues
that gridlock hatred because Iam from The Movement called Love.
(06:41):
This is a Jamaica 179thStreet bound F Express train.
The next stop is Forest Hills 71st Avenue.
My name is Kimiko Hahn andI'll be reading Ode to the
F. Ode to the F. Yes,
you connected my brownstone.
(07:03):
Some 20 stops to thehumdrum 71st ad Continental
Boulevard.
The distance of an everything bagelor notes on Donne's The Flea for
my intro to poetry or witheyes closed, his sublet,
Christmas ornaments pitched againstthe walls on New Year's Eve,
(07:24):
his bare mattress and thin blanket,his grinn so much more outer borough.
I could hardly stand inthat threshold. Buzz me in,
buzz me in.
Of course today this is amemory and the pandemic drift of
thought where only the medics andthe delivery guys stand on the
(07:48):
platform I think.
This is a Flushing MainStreet bound 7 local train.
The next stop is 69th Street.
Before Your Arrival by Ellen Hagan
Before your arrival,
the ones who brought your fatherhere come bring with them whole
(08:12):
almonds, dried berries andclementines wrapped in cloth,
their clothes and smart shoes too.
They come looking for the place I'vetaken your father looking for the New York
City that could rival home. YourAbba loves the East Village.
Its graffiti, trash and all thelanguages on all the streets.
(08:35):
On 14th and first we visit the Philippines
Elvie's Turo Turo, but thistrip he wants to see more.
So we travel to little Philippines,
Queens 69th off the seven,train off the seven.
The whole of Queens opens wide for us.
Travel agents and wholesalesend anything back for cheap
(08:59):
travel for cheap return.
Return we buy Okay Magazinesby the handful for gossip.
Tagalog with Englishsubtitles, glossy photos,
Pacquiao with his chiseledgrin everywhere and we eat
Krystal's where they serve marinated pork
belly
(09:23):
sinigang na baboy, kare-kare,pancit bihon, & lumpiang sariwa.
I listen close to it all.
Deep fried ruffle fat poollee noodles with shrimp,
milk fish. Your Abba fakeorders pork blood stew.
But I am sure I would eat anything herebecause this is how much I trust the
two who brought your fatherup in the world. We eat,
(09:45):
sing sing and pork in tamarind soup.
This is how to say snack inTagalog. Merienda, Merienda
is snack. This is how to say icecream in Tagalog halo-halo, halo-halo
is ice cream. This is howto leave your country.
Don't look back. You will onlysee the islands melting away.
(10:07):
Halo-halo, This is howto say snack in Tagalog
Merienda.
This is how to feel ofone place and of one more.
Back home we sit, get caught up.
I read about mansions in Manila,
how to make millions face liftsand silk and hair, red lips,
(10:27):
muscles and beauty.
In Tagalog I muddle through whileyour Abba laughs translates.
Translations get muddled too thisis how to raise a baby in two
places at once and how itfeels to live and move in two
worlds at once.
(10:49):
This is a Forest Hills,71st Avenue bound R Train.
The next stop is Woodhaven Boulevard.
My name is Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie
and this poem is calledReckless Libations.
We walked to school fullof chatter and laughs.
(11:13):
Knowing unknowing, all innocent
Ayana's bracelets composedcool silver music,
beaded braids, echoing,lost languages and marches.
My father lectured meabout my sister's window,
concave glass,
(11:35):
a small hole I barely remember.
Her closet full of honeydrenched women on record sleeves.
She was storing for himhoodlum, my father said,
on endless amber afternoonsolder boys glisten on the
courts, we kids swung into the sky,
(11:58):
wrote a giant concretetortoise to nowhere jumped
rope, popped bubblegum, dreaming,
wordless together 18 stories of piss
and perfume. Good morning, good night.
The elevator is stuck again.You're getting so big.
(12:22):
Tell your parents I saidhello. It got colder.
No options. Kissed the glass pipe.
I saw eyes filled with dying, ghosts,
fraying men poured reckless libations.
Pizza shop, Chinese food,
(12:43):
liquor store palms slapping palms.
For a long time I thought thosehollow exclamation points puncturing
night were fireworks.
I tucked myself into the alphabet,
revised my eyes,
green my complexion laitwith a dash of cafe.
(13:05):
Ayana lost a cousin to high water,
lost her childhood sweetheart to steel.
When I finally understood the rapid firecommas and periods outside my window,
I discovered the joy of sneakingkisses on quiet staircases and
buying wine coolers uptown.
(13:26):
I loved my skin, I loved my neighbors,
and especially those moments inthe summer when our jam came on the
radio,
we turned it up and I felt thesinging in the midst of it all.
Breathing together in the midst of it all.
(13:48):
Breathing together.
This is a Flushing MainStreet bound 7 local train.
The next stop is 33rd Street.
I'm Ariel Francisco and this is mypoem Below the Seven Train at 33rd and
Rawson, A Hammer Falls.
(14:09):
Either Thor is drunk or one of thosetwo construction workers peeking
down over the ledge like a coupleof pigeons fucked up big time.
The iron clank against concrete jarringme from my daydreams, just inches away,
inches away from having my brain splatpavement or from a surefire lawsuit.
(14:30):
Yet here I am alive, unchanged,having just barely missed my train.
This is a Jamaica 179thstreet bound F Express train.
The next stop is Forest Hills 71st Avenue.
My name is Sweta Srivastava Vikram
(14:51):
and I'm reading my poemLove Affair on the F
train. Listening to tireless stories of
commuters munching on friesand nuts in the F train,
my board mind reaches forest tellsalong with the emptiness in my
heart,
aching for my deceased motherwhose ashes we had recently
(15:13):
scattered in the muddy watersof the Ganges in Benares
with my tears nakedraindrops, small as a nail,
a single thought surrounded me.If I don't write another poem,
I will drown in the ocean of mysorrows and the dead world will
(15:34):
scatter my broken bones.
Amidst the unknown intimacy of quicksand,
suddenly a woman younger thanmy mom draped in a georgette
sari and with vermillion inher hair enters the subway car.
A brown arm holds her tightly aroundher love handles while she says,
(15:55):
I've dreamed about you all mylife without realizing it was you.
Love isn't a jewel put away ina safe to hide from pirates,
I know.
But I'd never seen a middle agedIndian couple publicly swim in
the ocean of emotions exploding onthe insides. The train empties out.
The couple sits across from me. We needto be careful when we go back home.
(16:20):
He ran his fingertipson the cleft of a chin.
My wife knows about us and hasthreatened to tell your husband.
This is Junction Boulevard.My name is Nadia Q.
Ahmed and this poem iscalled Stretching Strength,
(16:41):
74th and Roosevelt. A voicecracks next to me, "Apu,
stretch-er karone strong hobe."
I don't turn my head,
but imagine the first womantouching the arm of the second.
True enough, I think,
(17:01):
and the muscles around myknees tense with understanding,
but then my memory bends and I hearmy mother who has been teaching me
since I was five to stand up again.
Even though you've scraped yourshins on the jagged pebbled sidewalk.
These days when she notes to mesometimes the pains blooming in her own
(17:21):
body.
She lays a foundation of resiliencetoo and stresses the last part of the
word stress packs it likeshe's chewing down on gum,
turns it in her alchemy tostretch "Stretch-er karone strong hobe." "Stress-er
karone strong hobe." "Youwill be stronger for the
stress."
I'd
(17:46):
read an article by a poet and writera few weeks before that offered
translation not as a funnel buta sieve as an art about the rough
human meaning that shapes the world.
I look down on the sewergrate is the word foundry,
the same one from a colleague's wordscramble game. We unjumble every day.
(18:09):
I look up foundry,
a place where metal orglass is melted and formed
into particular shapes. Isn't that stress?
Isn't that stretching? TheJackson Heights corner,
this concrete,
this metal so hard on usall because such is our
(18:31):
hardness and such is our strength.
This is a MetropolitanAvenue bound M train.
The next stop is Forest Avenue.
This is Robert Ostrom andI'm going to read Apatheia.
I want to be a loom on a porch,
(18:54):
but I am the skin you ask the fox for,
the neighbor in the showerwho clears his throat.
I am not the electric heater,
but I'm wool socks on a clothes horse.
I sense a slow moving threat in me.
A thing you can't say to another,
a thing that would wreckthe house. Like a sage,
(19:18):
I want to go an entireday undisturbed by the
passions, but out here thereare two kinds of trash:
burning and smoldering.
I am the devil worshiper down theroad, a gravestone in my yard.
I don't want to be a cow country myth.
I want to be that mulberryand the chain link fence every
(19:42):
day growing stranger and more resolute.
This is Flushing Main Street.
My name is Amy Alvarez andthis is 149th Street Notebook.
The psychic on the cornertoted grocery bags,
(20:03):
past neon signs and her windows runin her stocking. Inching up shin.
I scooped garter snakes from sidewalkcracks. My cats captured cicadas,
fluttering green jewels in their pinkmouths. Ma never let us keep them.
That corner always needed a streetlightboy's blood on asphalt given his
(20:24):
testimony, I can still seesunset behind the church,
steeple above juniper'scanopy, magenta sky and crows,
crows, crows.
It wasn't lost on us at theexpressway was named Utopia.
There never was any question was there?
(20:45):
This is a Brooklyn bound J Train.
The next stop is Woodhaven Boulevard.
My name is Ryan Black.
The poem is Not Once. Listen,
the early shadows swish andacclimation, born of steel,
threading steel for the Jamaicalocal. It's break and stutter.
(21:08):
Our only music that and Olga Tañón
bootlegged live from Mexico City wherethe Rolling Stones looped for three
weeks in August from the tenementsfourth floor from Bobby's apartment.
Some girls, Bobby,
who even in winter went about sleeveless,
(21:28):
displaying tracked arms and once askedmy first girlfriend if he could taste her
pussy, then threw all of hisfurniture out of the window.
For years, he'd stopped me at theturnstiles and put his hand to my chest.
His voice stunned into pleasure.It's so good. He'd say,
don't even try it once and toanyone who'd listen, please,
(21:52):
he'd say, anyone at all. Not once.
I want to believe that whenKeats began his famous ballad,
his back to the low burn fire,
a heel slightly raisedwhen he wrote of the
pale knight and withered sedge, La belledame sans merci hath thee in thrall.
It wasn't Spencer, he considered.
(22:14):
Can I say DSO was hardly onhis mind called Flora. Mel,
an afterthought or even hisbrother Tom, buried at 19,
that death loitering through November.
That wasn't Fanny who tookthe kisses for or Posey,
but something closer to ourneed to lose everything,
(22:35):
to try it once than againand again until what?
Bobby, who would descend tothe avenue and nothing else.
See all day long as the steel framesof the overhead dispersed midday light,
leaving streaks of blondeacross his curved back.
Say what you will for industry.
(22:55):
It still delights if I canname it once you'd understand.
The next stop is 103rdStreet Corona Plaza.
My name is Bushra Rehman and this isCorona and I'm Not Talking about the
Beer. Corona and I'm nottalking about the beer.
(23:20):
I'm talking about a placethat has a little village.
Persian are the number seven train inQueens between Junction Boulevard and
hundred 11th Street.
I'm talking about the Corona IceKings Spaghetti Park in PS 19.
The Corona F Scott Fitzgerald called theValley of Ashes as a great Gatsby drove
past it on his night of carousal,
but me and my own know his home and wedidn't know about any valley of ashes
(23:44):
because by then it toppedoff by our houses. You know, the kind made from brick,
this tan color, no self-respectingbrick would be at all. That's Corona.
I'm talking about Flushing MeadowsPark, home of Worlds Fair relics,
where it felt as if some ancient tribeor white people had lived there long ago.
It was our own Stonehenge,
our own Eastern Allen sculptures madefrom a time when New York City and all the
(24:06):
country was imagining the world'sfuture back when the future still seemed
exciting and glossy,
like some kind of old stainlesssteel science fiction movie. Not now.
When the future seems like theinside of a dark coat sleeve.
I'm talking about Corona underthe shadow of Shea Stadium,
where brown men became famous and movedto Long Island where our brothers played
(24:28):
baseball in the tar schoolyardson the weekends. Back then,
our brother's futures were soopen and they were so close,
they all dreamed the same dream togetherthat with a crack of a bat and the pool
of their skinny brown legs that couldrun away from the smell of garbage,
the fear on the streets,
the boys beating them up when theycame out of the S in the evening,
they could hit that bat and it wouldland them all the way into the safety of
(24:50):
Shea Stadium and then pass that into theisland that was long and rich where all
the baseball stars lived.
This is a Jamaica 179thStreet bound F Express train.
The next stop is 21st Street Queensbridge.
(25:11):
This is Pichchenda Baoreading In Long Island City.
Today I was stopped by the chatterof birds perched on a light pole.
It was an almost startling noise,
pricking that lonesome industrial corner.
All around, closed autobody shops, food,
(25:32):
truck warehouses,
anonymous buildings with loweredmetal gates lined the cracked uneven
sidewalks. No other soul in sight.
I wondered what did they,those insistent birds,
have to say to me,
a simple human mother carryinga load of groceries home.
(25:52):
Oh,
how long did I stand there rootedin that small indulgence until
I realized that none of it was for me?
This is a Manhattan bound Local train.
The next stop is SutBoulevard. Archer Avenue, JFK.
(26:13):
I'm Francisco Delgado and this is mypoem Trains Are More than Metaphors.
A train can't stay stillfor long. Its rumbling.
Home tells us when it's coming and going,
which is a better system than pausingfor an announcement that never comes.
When a train stops moving,it becomes a museum.
(26:34):
It needs a final destinationto mean something,
and this the second to last stop isonly important because it's here where
we'll onto another train thatwill take us the rest of the way.
The closing doors trainsare more than metaphors.
My son shows me how withor without us on board,
they go from place to place.
(26:58):
We're constantly learning thatgoing back is never the same,
aren't we? For now,
he's learning to not touch everysurface he sees and to never
trust an empty car.
We mind the gaps and absencesthat make here and there more than
one letter apart.
(27:20):
The next stop is 69th Street.
Hi,
my name is Jackie Shebow and I'm goingto be reading a poem called Seeing the
Apartment at 69th Street.I don't know it yet,
but I'm standing in the place betweenwhere I was and where I'll end up.
Today I'm meeting strangers with the wrongidea in my head of my possible future
(27:45):
long-legged women coming out of theshower perching on armrests Christmas
lights strung around doorways year round.
I'm looking for a spotto sit on the train.
I'm looking at leastfor a railing to hold.
I'm looking for a place to live.In the shadow of the seven.
(28:05):
I've left things behind at the old place,
which feels empty now that I'm aloneand each night I purchase them from
the pharmacy that hums with theclatter of the elevated trap.
A pink hairbrush, natural toothpaste,
a new brand of face washa razor on 69th street.
(28:26):
Instead of my imagineddreamy, beautiful non men,
there would only be one andher husband who took my coat.
Inside all of the apartmentsI see from the platform,
one of them mine cat hairgathers in the corner,
windows open on trees,
cockroaches peek out from the cornersand dart with projected temerity across
(28:50):
kitchen floors. Coffeegets cold and percolators.
I carry everything with me. Backand forth, up and down. Roosevelt,
the train a cradle sometime,but also a catapult.
This is the last stop on this train.
(29:12):
Thanks for listening. Tosee the map, hear the poems,
and learn more about our contributorsand about future trained readings,
go to queens bound.com.
This is QUEENSBOUND.
So which borough is this? Thisis Queens. This is Queens.
Queens the best borough.
This is my community andI love it. Hi everyone.
This is KC Trommer, founder ofQUEENSBOUND, a poetry project by, for,
and about Queens.
This project launched in 2018with a celebratory reading on the Flushing-bound 7
(00:25):
Train, which readersand writers alike loved.
We intended on sharingour 2020 edition in April,
2020 with another trainmeeting. But as you know,
COVID had other plans for all of us.
Around half of the poems in our 2020edition were recorded before Covid
(00:45):
touchdown in Queens. So when wefinished this edition of the project,
it reflected Queens before and during theearly days of the pandemic and allowed
our listeners to hear the city and travelaround Queens by listening to these
poems.
This edition includes 16 emerging andesteemed poets from across the borough
writing about their neighborhoods.
(01:06):
If you're curious about which stationstops correspond with the poems,
go to queensbound.com and find the poemsmarked in green on our Queens subway
map. Have a listen and pleaseenjoy QUEENSBOUND 2020.
This is a Queensbound M train.
The next stop is Elmhurst Avenue.
(01:29):
My name is Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond.The poem is called Packed.
You can't fit your country in a suitcase,
so you buy it in a groceryaisle of improvised ingredients.
You fill your pots and your pans with it,
your neighbors' apartments with smellsthat take you back to where you were
borne and why you left. You hang it onyour walls, put it on your fire escape,
your own little temple of familiars.Youpaint it on your faceand scream for the
team and your goalsfor your children,
enunciating every syllableso they neverforgetso you never forget there is
another country with your namestagged to it like a suitcase.
(02:16):
This is a Forest Hills71st Avenue bound R Train.
The next stop is JacksonHeights Roosevelt Avenue.
I'm Sahar Romani readingmy poem, Diversity Plaza.
Briefly,
I shake off my anxiety portalout of my head into the
(02:39):
plaza lit with uncles high from slow talk
and beetle nut as youngwomen FaceTime lovers perhaps
long distance in aHimalayan city sidewalks tea
tipsy with strangers whostroll in a grammar of laughter
I once heard in the mothercountry and down the street
(03:03):
mannequins dressed uplike it's holiday royal in
sequin golden embroidery asif we're at a wedding party
as if I have no papers tograde tonight over calendared
tomorrow with departmentmeetings at least along
74th Street a subwoofer bumps out
(03:26):
a qawwali a trick to forget itsnearly winter elixir that suspends
even daylight departureSpell of good company walks
me home tonight.
This is a Flushing MainStreet bound 7 local train.
The next stop is 111th Street.
(03:50):
ACQ - A Tribe Called Queens by MA
Dennis.
To find out your adult film actor name,
combine the names of your firstchildhood pet and the street you grew up
on.
My name is Dino Mexico and I come fromA Tribe Called Queens the birthplace of
Run-DMC and Ladies Love CoolJames my 3rd grade teacher,
Mrs. James sent me tothe principal's office;
at P.S. 36 a Cadillac-sized dark-skinnedmahogany desk kept Mr. Downey from
getting his hands on mehis faceliquid red like canned beets,
promising expulsion and expellingthe n-word-hard R (no fabric softener
softness)-you never forget the day yourtiki torch gets extinguished:the tribe
has spoken. A Tribe CalledQueens a melting pot:
Italian Ices in Corona Jamaicanbeef patties in Jamaica,
Queens gyros and empanadas in JacksonHeights-What a non-Halal revelation!
Learning that being born at Long IslandJewish hospital didn't absolve me from
being Gentile-here,
where a Fine Yiddish-speaking nanny wentfrom a bridal shop in Flushing all the
way to syndicationinQueens, home of kings:
Kevin James to John Coltraneeven LongIsland decided to build its City here,
this place of beats,
rhymes and life bustling with people'sinstinctive travelson alphanumeric soup
buses and trains searching for thepaths of rhythm back on the Boulevard Of
Lindenan expelled 3rd grader soughthealing in Hostess Ho-Ho's shoplifted from
Famous Corner Deli,
but got caught five finger-handed bya beer-bellied man FEAR and paranoia,
like a virus,
gripped me yet I broke free as heyelled at me"Get the hell outta here!
And don't come back!" but I will alwayscome back to Main Street and Avenues
that gridlock hatred because Iam from The Movement called Love.
(06:41):
This is a Jamaica 179thStreet bound F Express train.
The next stop is Forest Hills 71st Avenue.
My name is Kimiko Hahn andI'll be reading Ode to the
F. Ode to the F. Yes,
you connected my brownstone.
(07:03):
Some 20 stops to thehumdrum 71st ad Continental
Boulevard.
The distance of an everything bagelor notes on Donne's The Flea for
my intro to poetry or witheyes closed, his sublet,
Christmas ornaments pitched againstthe walls on New Year's Eve,
(07:24):
his bare mattress and thin blanket,his grinn so much more outer borough.
I could hardly stand inthat threshold. Buzz me in,
buzz me in.
Of course today this is amemory and the pandemic drift of
thought where only the medics andthe delivery guys stand on the
(07:48):
platform I think.
This is a Flushing MainStreet bound 7 local train.
The next stop is 69th Street.
Before Your Arrival by Ellen Hagan
Before your arrival,
the ones who brought your fatherhere come bring with them whole
(08:12):
almonds, dried berries andclementines wrapped in cloth,
their clothes and smart shoes too.
They come looking for the place I'vetaken your father looking for the New York
City that could rival home. YourAbba loves the East Village.
Its graffiti, trash and all thelanguages on all the streets.
(08:35):
On 14th and first we visit the Philippines
Elvie's Turo Turo, but thistrip he wants to see more.
So we travel to little Philippines,
Queens 69th off the seven,train off the seven.
The whole of Queens opens wide for us.
Travel agents and wholesalesend anything back for cheap
(08:59):
travel for cheap return.
Return we buy Okay Magazinesby the handful for gossip.
Tagalog with Englishsubtitles, glossy photos,
Pacquiao with his chiseledgrin everywhere and we eat
Krystal's where they serve marinated pork
belly
(09:23):
sinigang na baboy, kare-kare,pancit bihon, & lumpiang sariwa.
I listen close to it all.
Deep fried ruffle fat poollee noodles with shrimp,
milk fish. Your Abba fakeorders pork blood stew.
But I am sure I would eat anything herebecause this is how much I trust the
two who brought your fatherup in the world. We eat,
(09:45):
sing sing and pork in tamarind soup.
This is how to say snack inTagalog. Merienda, Merienda
is snack. This is how to say icecream in Tagalog halo-halo, halo-halo
is ice cream. This is howto leave your country.
Don't look back. You will onlysee the islands melting away.
(10:07):
Halo-halo, This is howto say snack in Tagalog
Merienda.
This is how to feel ofone place and of one more.
Back home we sit, get caught up.
I read about mansions in Manila,
how to make millions face liftsand silk and hair, red lips,
(10:27):
muscles and beauty.
In Tagalog I muddle through whileyour Abba laughs translates.
Translations get muddled too thisis how to raise a baby in two
places at once and how itfeels to live and move in two
worlds at once.
(10:49):
This is a Forest Hills,71st Avenue bound R Train.
The next stop is Woodhaven Boulevard.
My name is Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie
and this poem is calledReckless Libations.
We walked to school fullof chatter and laughs.
(11:13):
Knowing unknowing, all innocent
Ayana's bracelets composedcool silver music,
beaded braids, echoing,lost languages and marches.
My father lectured meabout my sister's window,
concave glass,
(11:35):
a small hole I barely remember.
Her closet full of honeydrenched women on record sleeves.
She was storing for himhoodlum, my father said,
on endless amber afternoonsolder boys glisten on the
courts, we kids swung into the sky,
(11:58):
wrote a giant concretetortoise to nowhere jumped
rope, popped bubblegum, dreaming,
wordless together 18 stories of piss
and perfume. Good morning, good night.
The elevator is stuck again.You're getting so big.
(12:22):
Tell your parents I saidhello. It got colder.
No options. Kissed the glass pipe.
I saw eyes filled with dying, ghosts,
fraying men poured reckless libations.
Pizza shop, Chinese food,
(12:43):
liquor store palms slapping palms.
For a long time I thought thosehollow exclamation points puncturing
night were fireworks.
I tucked myself into the alphabet,
revised my eyes,
green my complexion laitwith a dash of cafe.
(13:05):
Ayana lost a cousin to high water,
lost her childhood sweetheart to steel.
When I finally understood the rapid firecommas and periods outside my window,
I discovered the joy of sneakingkisses on quiet staircases and
buying wine coolers uptown.
(13:26):
I loved my skin, I loved my neighbors,
and especially those moments inthe summer when our jam came on the
radio,
we turned it up and I felt thesinging in the midst of it all.
Breathing together in the midst of it all.
(13:48):
Breathing together.
This is a Flushing MainStreet bound 7 local train.
The next stop is 33rd Street.
I'm Ariel Francisco and this is mypoem Below the Seven Train at 33rd and
Rawson, A Hammer Falls.
(14:09):
Either Thor is drunk or one of thosetwo construction workers peeking
down over the ledge like a coupleof pigeons fucked up big time.
The iron clank against concrete jarringme from my daydreams, just inches away,
inches away from having my brain splatpavement or from a surefire lawsuit.
(14:30):
Yet here I am alive, unchanged,having just barely missed my train.
This is a Jamaica 179thstreet bound F Express train.
The next stop is Forest Hills 71st Avenue.
My name is Sweta Srivastava Vikram
(14:51):
and I'm reading my poemLove Affair on the F
train. Listening to tireless stories of
commuters munching on friesand nuts in the F train,
my board mind reaches forest tellsalong with the emptiness in my
heart,
aching for my deceased motherwhose ashes we had recently
(15:13):
scattered in the muddy watersof the Ganges in Benares
with my tears nakedraindrops, small as a nail,
a single thought surrounded me.If I don't write another poem,
I will drown in the ocean of mysorrows and the dead world will
(15:34):
scatter my broken bones.
Amidst the unknown intimacy of quicksand,
suddenly a woman younger thanmy mom draped in a georgette
sari and with vermillion inher hair enters the subway car.
A brown arm holds her tightly aroundher love handles while she says,
(15:55):
I've dreamed about you all mylife without realizing it was you.
Love isn't a jewel put away ina safe to hide from pirates,
I know.
But I'd never seen a middle agedIndian couple publicly swim in
the ocean of emotions exploding onthe insides. The train empties out.
The couple sits across from me. We needto be careful when we go back home.
(16:20):
He ran his fingertipson the cleft of a chin.
My wife knows about us and hasthreatened to tell your husband.
This is Junction Boulevard.My name is Nadia Q.
Ahmed and this poem iscalled Stretching Strength,
(16:41):
74th and Roosevelt. A voicecracks next to me, "Apu,
stretch-er karone strong hobe."
I don't turn my head,
but imagine the first womantouching the arm of the second.
True enough, I think,
(17:01):
and the muscles around myknees tense with understanding,
but then my memory bends and I hearmy mother who has been teaching me
since I was five to stand up again.
Even though you've scraped yourshins on the jagged pebbled sidewalk.
These days when she notes to mesometimes the pains blooming in her own
(17:21):
body.
She lays a foundation of resiliencetoo and stresses the last part of the
word stress packs it likeshe's chewing down on gum,
turns it in her alchemy tostretch "Stretch-er karone strong hobe." "Stress-er
karone strong hobe." "Youwill be stronger for the
stress."
I'd
(17:46):
read an article by a poet and writera few weeks before that offered
translation not as a funnel buta sieve as an art about the rough
human meaning that shapes the world.
I look down on the sewergrate is the word foundry,
the same one from a colleague's wordscramble game. We unjumble every day.
(18:09):
I look up foundry,
a place where metal orglass is melted and formed
into particular shapes. Isn't that stress?
Isn't that stretching? TheJackson Heights corner,
this concrete,
this metal so hard on usall because such is our
(18:31):
hardness and such is our strength.
This is a MetropolitanAvenue bound M train.
The next stop is Forest Avenue.
This is Robert Ostrom andI'm going to read Apatheia.
I want to be a loom on a porch,
(18:54):
but I am the skin you ask the fox for,
the neighbor in the showerwho clears his throat.
I am not the electric heater,
but I'm wool socks on a clothes horse.
I sense a slow moving threat in me.
A thing you can't say to another,
a thing that would wreckthe house. Like a sage,
(19:18):
I want to go an entireday undisturbed by the
passions, but out here thereare two kinds of trash:
burning and smoldering.
I am the devil worshiper down theroad, a gravestone in my yard.
I don't want to be a cow country myth.
I want to be that mulberryand the chain link fence every
(19:42):
day growing stranger and more resolute.
This is Flushing Main Street.
My name is Amy Alvarez andthis is 149th Street Notebook.
The psychic on the cornertoted grocery bags,
(20:03):
past neon signs and her windows runin her stocking. Inching up shin.
I scooped garter snakes from sidewalkcracks. My cats captured cicadas,
fluttering green jewels in their pinkmouths. Ma never let us keep them.
That corner always needed a streetlightboy's blood on asphalt given his
(20:24):
testimony, I can still seesunset behind the church,
steeple above juniper'scanopy, magenta sky and crows,
crows, crows.
It wasn't lost on us at theexpressway was named Utopia.
There never was any question was there?
(20:45):
This is a Brooklyn bound J Train.
The next stop is Woodhaven Boulevard.
My name is Ryan Black.
The poem is Not Once. Listen,
the early shadows swish andacclimation, born of steel,
threading steel for the Jamaicalocal. It's break and stutter.
(21:08):
Our only music that and Olga Tañón
bootlegged live from Mexico City wherethe Rolling Stones looped for three
weeks in August from the tenementsfourth floor from Bobby's apartment.
Some girls, Bobby,
who even in winter went about sleeveless,
(21:28):
displaying tracked arms and once askedmy first girlfriend if he could taste her
pussy, then threw all of hisfurniture out of the window.
For years, he'd stopped me at theturnstiles and put his hand to my chest.
His voice stunned into pleasure.It's so good. He'd say,
don't even try it once and toanyone who'd listen, please,
(21:52):
he'd say, anyone at all. Not once.
I want to believe that whenKeats began his famous ballad,
his back to the low burn fire,
a heel slightly raisedwhen he wrote of the
pale knight and withered sedge, La belledame sans merci hath thee in thrall.
It wasn't Spencer, he considered.
(22:14):
Can I say DSO was hardly onhis mind called Flora. Mel,
an afterthought or even hisbrother Tom, buried at 19,
that death loitering through November.
That wasn't Fanny who tookthe kisses for or Posey,
but something closer to ourneed to lose everything,
(22:35):
to try it once than againand again until what?
Bobby, who would descend tothe avenue and nothing else.
See all day long as the steel framesof the overhead dispersed midday light,
leaving streaks of blondeacross his curved back.
Say what you will for industry.
(22:55):
It still delights if I canname it once you'd understand.
The next stop is 103rdStreet Corona Plaza.
My name is Bushra Rehman and this isCorona and I'm Not Talking about the
Beer. Corona and I'm nottalking about the beer.
(23:20):
I'm talking about a placethat has a little village.
Persian are the number seven train inQueens between Junction Boulevard and
hundred 11th Street.
I'm talking about the Corona IceKings Spaghetti Park in PS 19.
The Corona F Scott Fitzgerald called theValley of Ashes as a great Gatsby drove
past it on his night of carousal,
but me and my own know his home and wedidn't know about any valley of ashes
(23:44):
because by then it toppedoff by our houses. You know, the kind made from brick,
this tan color, no self-respectingbrick would be at all. That's Corona.
I'm talking about Flushing MeadowsPark, home of Worlds Fair relics,
where it felt as if some ancient tribeor white people had lived there long ago.
It was our own Stonehenge,
our own Eastern Allen sculptures madefrom a time when New York City and all the
(24:06):
country was imagining the world'sfuture back when the future still seemed
exciting and glossy,
like some kind of old stainlesssteel science fiction movie. Not now.
When the future seems like theinside of a dark coat sleeve.
I'm talking about Corona underthe shadow of Shea Stadium,
where brown men became famous and movedto Long Island where our brothers played
(24:28):
baseball in the tar schoolyardson the weekends. Back then,
our brother's futures were soopen and they were so close,
they all dreamed the same dream togetherthat with a crack of a bat and the pool
of their skinny brown legs that couldrun away from the smell of garbage,
the fear on the streets,
the boys beating them up when theycame out of the S in the evening,
they could hit that bat and it wouldland them all the way into the safety of
(24:50):
Shea Stadium and then pass that into theisland that was long and rich where all
the baseball stars lived.
This is a Jamaica 179thStreet bound F Express train.
The next stop is 21st Street Queensbridge.
(25:11):
This is Pichchenda Baoreading In Long Island City.
Today I was stopped by the chatterof birds perched on a light pole.
It was an almost startling noise,
pricking that lonesome industrial corner.
All around, closed autobody shops, food,
(25:32):
truck warehouses,
anonymous buildings with loweredmetal gates lined the cracked uneven
sidewalks. No other soul in sight.
I wondered what did they,those insistent birds,
have to say to me,
a simple human mother carryinga load of groceries home.
(25:52):
Oh,
how long did I stand there rootedin that small indulgence until
I realized that none of it was for me?
This is a Manhattan bound Local train.
The next stop is SutBoulevard. Archer Avenue, JFK.
(26:13):
I'm Francisco Delgado and this is mypoem Trains Are More than Metaphors.
A train can't stay stillfor long. Its rumbling.
Home tells us when it's coming and going,
which is a better system than pausingfor an announcement that never comes.
When a train stops moving,it becomes a museum.
(26:34):
It needs a final destinationto mean something,
and this the second to last stop isonly important because it's here where
we'll onto another train thatwill take us the rest of the way.
The closing doors trainsare more than metaphors.
My son shows me how withor without us on board,
they go from place to place.
(26:58):
We're constantly learning thatgoing back is never the same,
aren't we? For now,
he's learning to not touch everysurface he sees and to never
trust an empty car.
We mind the gaps and absencesthat make here and there more than
one letter apart.
(27:20):
The next stop is 69th Street.
Hi,
my name is Jackie Shebow and I'm goingto be reading a poem called Seeing the
Apartment at 69th Street.I don't know it yet,
but I'm standing in the place betweenwhere I was and where I'll end up.
Today I'm meeting strangers with the wrongidea in my head of my possible future
(27:45):
long-legged women coming out of theshower perching on armrests Christmas
lights strung around doorways year round.
I'm looking for a spotto sit on the train.
I'm looking at leastfor a railing to hold.
I'm looking for a place to live.In the shadow of the seven.
(28:05):
I've left things behind at the old place,
which feels empty now that I'm aloneand each night I purchase them from
the pharmacy that hums with theclatter of the elevated trap.
A pink hairbrush, natural toothpaste,
a new brand of face washa razor on 69th street.
(28:26):
Instead of my imagineddreamy, beautiful non men,
there would only be one andher husband who took my coat.
Inside all of the apartmentsI see from the platform,
one of them mine cat hairgathers in the corner,
windows open on trees,
cockroaches peek out from the cornersand dart with projected temerity across
(28:50):
kitchen floors. Coffeegets cold and percolators.
I carry everything with me. Backand forth, up and down. Roosevelt,
the train a cradle sometime,but also a catapult.
This is the last stop on this train.
(29:12):
Thanks for listening. Tosee the map, hear the poems,
and learn more about our contributorsand about future trained readings,
go to queens bound.com.
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