April 1, 2025 • 27 mins
QUEENSBOUND is a poetry project by, for, and about Queens. QUEENSBOUND 2021 is our third edition and it celebrates and reflects on Queens during the pandemic. 2021 contributors include: Philip F. Clark, Noelle de la Paz, Matthew Hittinger, Marcia B. Loughran, Jimena Lucero, Yasmin Adele Majeed, Nadia Misir, Shams A. Momin, Richard Jeffrey Newman, Nikay C. Paredes, Bino A. Realuyo, and Spencer Reece. This year’s edition includes our first poem in a language other than English, Shams A. Momin’s “Queens,” recorded in both Bengali and English. QUEENSBOUND 2021 selections were made by editorial board members Nadia Q. Ahmad, 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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(00:02):
This is QUEENSBOUND. Standaway from the Platform edge.
Hi everyone. This is KC Trommer, founderof QUEENSBOUND, a poetry project by,
for, and about Queens.
This is our third edition and includedhere are 12 poems from emerging and
esteemed poets writing about the borough.
The 2021 edition celebrates and reflectson queens during the pandemic reaching
(00:26):
the beaches of the Rockaways,
the suddenly quiet skies above JFK andthe streets of Jackson Heights as they
fill again with language.
Over 800 languages are spoken in queens,
so we wanted to begin to honor that byincluding poems and languages other than
English.
In this edition you can hear thefirst of these shaman's poem queens,
(00:48):
which he shares in English and Bengali.
If you're curious about which stationstops correspond to the poems,
go to queens bound.com and you can findthe poems marked in green on our queen
subway map.
Have a listen and pleaseenjoy Queens Bound 2021.
(01:08):
This is a Court Square, 23rdStreet bound E express train.
The next stop is Queen Plaza.
Feast by Nikay Parades.
When we lived an hour from each other,
I waited by an elevatedplatform until the train ground
(01:31):
up the tracks like aknife being sharpened.
Now we have become woman andman with the shopping bags
lamenting the jet lag nectarinesat the nicer supermarket.
The difference between ourcities is craving blueberry
(01:52):
and ATIs.
I am in awe of the versatilecabbage and the carrot that has
traveled miles only to bepeeled naked at midnight
from our bed, I can hear you eating.
I refuse to say sorry because thereis nothing wrong with asking for
(02:14):
another helping.
I mean there are so manythings we can do to a roast
chicken. I have stopped counting.
This is a Queensbound and local drain.
The next stop is 30th Avenue.
(02:40):
Golden Circe Sips HerCoffee by Matthew Hittinger.
It's true in Astoria too,
though her glamor is old nowand the coffee no nectar, but what her new country,
the country of her exilesupposedly runs on.
She has yet to unlock its magic,though she has taken its colors pink,
(03:04):
orange,
and brown as her own and has foundwhen she sits with her golden
retriever for he is all thatremains of her wolves and hounds.
The blue warriors leave her bee,
one or two will evensmile or stop to chat.
Powder and toasted coconutsstuck to their lips.
(03:25):
Her retriever curls around her,
paused cupping at the step edge regardlessof if it is an alcove at the precinct
or under the green awning at OlympusBagels or on a key foods riser,
devoid of plants C.
There's a routine to it to greetand keep the sun always on your face
(03:46):
and late in the day, shesorts through circulars.
The magic image is frozen in two simple
dimensions. If it's windy,
the retriever shifts it here andpresses his body a paperweight,
the calm, the wind-flippedcoupons she'll coo Greek to him,
and if you're lucky, she mightjust speak to you. Excuse me,
(04:10):
what time? Don't worry.If you have no watch,
approximate, she won'tturn you into swine.
She'll bless you in the nameof this God or that God.
They're all the same sun God.
In the end signal signwith a papal gesture,
the retriever will rise, turn and sprawl.
(04:32):
Fur matted, a bit mangyhis paws dangling over the
edge, tail raised like a fern.
This is a far Rockaway MottAvenue bound a local train.
The next stop is Rockaway Boulevard.
(04:54):
The Planes In Howard Beach. It is quiet.
The planes have stopped or I havestopped hearing them when I first
arrived.
They announced themselves likeraucous guests flying so low and
filling my ears and windowsDelta American Aer Lingus
(05:15):
flying cathedrals out of JFK.
The trees would sway off thetrain at Rockaway Boulevard.
I would listen for them as I leftthe roar of trains for their metal
breeze. Instead, I joked witha vendor on Liberty Avenue.
They are so low. I hear the flightattendants laughing in bed at night.
(05:38):
Their shadows roamed my walls forthe short minutes of their ascension.
It took months to get used to the sound.
I'd awakened some nightsthinking I had a bad dream
in winter.
They were shadow soundingin falling snow in summer,
glints of color orheraldry of logos and now I
(06:01):
miss their painted umbrage,the hubris of them.
They became a kind of lullaby for dreams.
People coming home or goingback to places they'd forgotten.
Destination as a cure on Jamaica Bay,
on Linden Boulevard.
I would glance up feeling themeven before they arrived and I
(06:23):
thought of how many times in them I flewover the buildings here on the hope of
soft landings in a future place.
I would live many years ahead.
It seems I traveled toward them.
Some call inside me beckoningthe planes have had their
say.
(06:46):
The next stop is Beach 36th Street.
For Rob. April 15th, 2020by Yasmin Adele Majeed,
written after Hala Allianzfor Jamaica for Ru Rockaway
Beach in the middle of lockdown,the bridge, a lonely route.
(07:07):
Gray skies with scum cloudssliced by telephone wire.
I stay in the car while you deliver themasks and watch an angel fly against
brick. It's called torchemitting stone sparks.
We are skipping work to do this.
The car ticks an errantsong and toll your return.
What can we do but run to thesea, the birth of the city.
(07:29):
I often forget that Queens is an island,
but here at its edge I remember thateven the land is circumscribed too.
In your tanned raincoat, youdisappear against the sand. Miles out,
a red barge floats and I think of cruiseships docked with the sick of workers
stuck at sea. Two months later,
the Oakland Longshoremen shut down theirport and protest and Angela reminds us,
(07:53):
labor is community. It is only April.
The crowds are coming soon andwhen you point out a surfer,
some shadow atop a break, thewind ripples your coat like water,
which moves and cuts and moves.
(08:13):
This is a Manhattan bound M local train.
The next stop is JacksonHeights, Roosevelt Avenue.
Ephphetha By Spencer Reece. Jesus Christ,
my dusty socialist. There'senough sun for everyone.
(08:35):
You state your crown chippedlike a front tooth after a
bar fight behind you,
a red curtain, you are
well hard to tell what you are.
The hymnals boxed intubs in the lady chapel
(08:56):
closed seven months. We opened St.Mark's in Jackson Heights, Queens,
New York City, Queens,
the unnoticed and mocked borough.
Can anything good comeout of Nazareth late
August, sun on the slate and God,
(09:16):
is it hot? Vestry, you interview me.
Who am I?
The wardens Henry andJorge unlock the safe with
the broken Tumblr in the sacristy,
the priest's office window rusted shut,
adjusting surgical masksover our noses to a muffle.
(09:40):
Our voices. We are a wedge.
You move with us.
You always have you and your circumspect
circumference.
The streets jounce with languagesand carts with mango slices and
ziplocs. All of it personal,
(10:02):
none of it personal.
The seven train slides on its rails.
It's a pandemic single king
you beckon from the bucklingblue glass donated by someone
everyone has forgotten.
We sweat and sit with no ac.
(10:27):
My white gura sticks to my pock back
like a sealed envelope.
This is a Forest Hills 71st avenue train.
The stop is Forest Hills. 71st Avenue.
The Visitor (10:49):
A Warning
Bino A. Realuyo.
Even the wisest cannot seethe spoken droplets of a voice
nor smell them. Riding oncebreath afoot to close into open.
Un warned eyes, eyes.
(11:09):
He no longer recalls thecashier's exact words,
but knew them to be airborne and free.
He did not notice the mass line of mouths.
Relieved bad day of pleasure.
In their hearts he got homefeeling nothing but the
aches of a most ordinary day.
(11:31):
TV news was filled with wisdom,
sharp enough to mince meatwords for the wise noted
and perfected by the already distanced.
He the wiser didn't see thesymptoms of a last ritual,
how it smelled of rice and everything,
(11:53):
then rice and nothing,
and then nothing at all.
How it tasted like fading.
Memories of what mattered and didn't
of endings of none. Two,
the nights it came knockingwere a fever and a half a new
(12:16):
memory raging into full shape.
The bed's comfort becamethe killing. Aches,
cuffs bounced like pleasinto the deafened rooms and
nature's gift.
This air a reciprocated air became
harder and harder to unwrap.
(12:40):
What he remembers most is notwhat we the people thought.
All along he did listen.
He did follow masks, gloves.
With the foresight of the wiser,
he washed away tails with cautionary soap,
each stretching graze.
(13:01):
And yet as he always knew,
even the wise and the wiser fall
when they do nothing theystood for is remembered
memories like people divide and divide
until they forget how theybrought forth the visitor,
(13:26):
the wisest of them all from Queens,
New York,
epicenter of epicentersof COVID-19 in the US.
This is a Jamaica 179thstreet bound F local train.
The next stop is 169th Street.
(13:49):
Queens by Shams A. Momin. A moment
many years ago, Eddie Murphy proclaimed
coming to America.
Indeed the prince kept his word and
landed in Queens. There is a Chinatown.
(14:13):
The Chicanos lean on the parking meter,
hang out all evening in front of a bodega.
There is little India anda whole lot of Caribbean
queens. The gossip
Ra or Jello. Who is better at a dance?
(14:37):
Brushed cor, so hard, Waka, Waka,
Pedro and W straight.What's got him today,
Corona or 2020 Mad dog. Who knows?
Here we are like a village.
(14:57):
There are homegrown fish, rice and beans,
hot samosas, sizzlingkebab and mango juice,
momos, gyros, and many more.
Are you black or white, Asian or Hispanic?
No one bothers.
(15:18):
We are here just people without caste,
without a tribe.
It is as if you are in your home.
The familiar is quarreland depar dance and sing to
you the song you left behind
(15:42):
A and f and seven trains.All are queens bound.
So let's hop in and get going.
A boy bend down a tied tohis forehead, shouting.
Let's go.
And it just feels right.
(16:13):
Coming to America, New York,
Chinatown,
(16:35):
Caribbean Queen
(16:57):
2020 Mad dog,
mango juice.
(18:04):
9 2 7 20.
(18:26):
This is a Rockaway park bound A train.
The next stop is Beach 98th Street.
Rockaway Beach.
One year after Hurricane Sandy by
Marcia B. Loughran. It's September again.
(18:47):
Only the dogs go barefoot.
A distracted sun glances back at summer.
Leftover waves bump the shore.
The beach is bigger without the people.
An occasional almondroasted old man deck chair.
Radio points out pilot whales ignoring
(19:12):
the pipeline, which severs the view.
Bulldozers men in hardhats and yellow vests
rebuilding the sand. Castle shore,
a million cubic yards ofsand and broken shells
pumped in from miles away under the ocean
(19:35):
all night. Backhoes beep caution.
Flags fly the parapets ofnew boardwalks named for
streets that dead end in the sand.
This is the opposite of archeology.
We who fear the timelessness of seagulls
(19:58):
try to hold still reconstructing
memory. This is how it was.
Make it how it was.
Jets line up to land at JFK,
the A train rumbles by and always the
(20:19):
shrugging sea.
This is a Flushing MainStreet bound 7 local train.
The next stop is Woodside 61st Street.
Then Here and Will Be by Jimena Lucero.
(20:39):
On Julio Rivera's corner.Magical winds blew.
It was summer pride.
The sky was jeweled and gay Queens
with its savory kitchens andgreen cemeteries can be quiet,
also subtly flashy.
There is a mapping to ourliberation in our neighbors.
(21:05):
On the radio they mentionedthe opening of glitz.
The streets read with critiquesof capitalism and graffiti
organizers at the HIV testing center,
distribute condoms, fruit stands,
pop art by the train station,
(21:27):
big blueberries for $2.
I am sometimes blue.
Then I remember thetime I saw a trans elder
riding her bike and smiling behind her,
her lover.
I was on my walk and carrieda fallen star Magnolia.
(21:52):
The past fruit always finds me.
The past fruit always leads me here.
This is a Forest Hills71st Avenue bound R train.
The next stop is Elmhurst Avenue.
As If It Were Real (22:11):
Part One by Richard Jeffrey Newman.
We're on the platform at ElmhurstAvenue waiting for the R back to
Roosevelt so we don'thave to walk in the rain.
Or maybe we're headed to the Vietnameserestaurant where we first tasted
foe on Broadway and we're walking pastJudge Street where the aunt who never
(22:34):
married on the Irish side of her familystill lived when we were together.
Or maybe this memory isn't real,
but in it since it wouldn't surpriseme and it lives in me as if it were
real.
We're in that neighborhood somewherepublic enough that she lowers her voice as
she leans in close. The lasttime I saw my mother's sister,
(22:57):
she almost whispers. Itwas just the two of us,
me and her sitting in her living roomafter Christmas dinner like we used to
do when I was younger. Do you love him?
She wanted to know himbeing you. Of course,
when I told her yes, she glanced,frowning into the dining room and side.
(23:19):
At least talk to him aboutgetting his nose done.
She locked her gaze on the table.We just cleared as she spoke.
You don't want yourkids to look too Jewish.
This is Leffertss Boulevard.
(23:42):
LASTSTOP LASTSTOP by Nadia Misir.
I slide on the wet underbellyof an abandoned poem,
bruise stanza onto my back,
Dodge nasty track watertrying to baptize my hair.
I swallow a pigeon howling chutneyremixes of Bollywood ballads at
the edge of the platform,
(24:03):
and wait for Leo efforts to call theA train back home for those evergreen
words.
Picking purple figs from mygrandmother's fig tree in my margin of
queen.
And counting the green Heineken bottlesorbiting its trunk is my new religion.
(24:24):
Love. Letter to the train tracks.
I grew up comparing to thesmooth blue lines of loose leaf
love letter to loose leafthat did not turn to dust.
At the touch of an eraserlove letter to margins
love. Letter to the split in theelevated tracks of the A train to
witnessing that moment.Leila Letford Boulevard,
(24:47):
bound a and far rock bound,
a shared track space beforebranching off in different
directions. One for the C,
the other for little Guyana.Is that a line break?
This is a Forest Hills 71st Avenue train.
(25:11):
The is Grand Avenue. Newtown.
Boulevard of Ghosts byNoelle de la Paz for the
frontline, for the essentialfor the far from home.
They say rose, they sayGodfather, say, union soldiers.
The first immigrant, a oncefortunate squanderer of riches.
(25:35):
I run slow in a summer ofsickness on a boulevard of ghosts.
The dead do to enjoy fluffyclouds and Calvary hills,
a famous skyline. Theproximity to an urban center,
though it is in fact too quietfor some of their tastes.
But for the new ones still nursing.Fresh grief. What can it mean to rest?
(26:00):
I've heard stories from thegraveyard parties, from family,
from back home. Noodles andrice cakes and skewers of meat.
Grilled over coals. Feast. Enoughfor everyone on both sides.
Say mother and child, saythe father's son, the holy,
the spirited,
(26:20):
drinking and gambling andsinging and sin. Firecrackers.
Shot. Rattling into the night tojoin the heaven's deadest sars.
I am panting in the bikelane face covered by mask.
Counting the stone sentinelsasleep at their posts.
Nearby the beds fill up, turn cold.
(26:43):
Turnover sickness findsthe heart of a cluster of
nurses. Say Ana.
Behind the cemetery gates, there aretombstones engraved with birthplaces.
It's close to noon and too sunny.
A cold sweat runs down my face and thewind in my ears. Sounds like voices.
(27:07):
Say ilo. Say Gio. Say Manila.
Say, home is where the running stops.
Say ours is where the work ends.
Stand clear of the closing doors please.
Thanks for listening. Tosee the map, hear the poems,
(27:31):
and learn more about our contributorsand about future train readings.
Go to queensbound.com.
This is QUEENSBOUND. Standaway from the Platform edge.
Hi everyone. This is KC Trommer, founderof QUEENSBOUND, a poetry project by,
for, and about Queens.
This is our third edition and includedhere are 12 poems from emerging and
esteemed poets writing about the borough.
The 2021 edition celebrates and reflectson queens during the pandemic reaching
(00:26):
the beaches of the Rockaways,
the suddenly quiet skies above JFK andthe streets of Jackson Heights as they
fill again with language.
Over 800 languages are spoken in queens,
so we wanted to begin to honor that byincluding poems and languages other than
English.
In this edition you can hear thefirst of these shaman's poem queens,
(00:48):
which he shares in English and Bengali.
If you're curious about which stationstops correspond to the poems,
go to queens bound.com and you can findthe poems marked in green on our queen
subway map.
Have a listen and pleaseenjoy Queens Bound 2021.
(01:08):
This is a Court Square, 23rdStreet bound E express train.
The next stop is Queen Plaza.
Feast by Nikay Parades.
When we lived an hour from each other,
I waited by an elevatedplatform until the train ground
(01:31):
up the tracks like aknife being sharpened.
Now we have become woman andman with the shopping bags
lamenting the jet lag nectarinesat the nicer supermarket.
The difference between ourcities is craving blueberry
(01:52):
and ATIs.
I am in awe of the versatilecabbage and the carrot that has
traveled miles only to bepeeled naked at midnight
from our bed, I can hear you eating.
I refuse to say sorry because thereis nothing wrong with asking for
(02:14):
another helping.
I mean there are so manythings we can do to a roast
chicken. I have stopped counting.
This is a Queensbound and local drain.
The next stop is 30th Avenue.
(02:40):
Golden Circe Sips HerCoffee by Matthew Hittinger.
It's true in Astoria too,
though her glamor is old nowand the coffee no nectar, but what her new country,
the country of her exilesupposedly runs on.
She has yet to unlock its magic,though she has taken its colors pink,
(03:04):
orange,
and brown as her own and has foundwhen she sits with her golden
retriever for he is all thatremains of her wolves and hounds.
The blue warriors leave her bee,
one or two will evensmile or stop to chat.
Powder and toasted coconutsstuck to their lips.
(03:25):
Her retriever curls around her,
paused cupping at the step edge regardlessof if it is an alcove at the precinct
or under the green awning at OlympusBagels or on a key foods riser,
devoid of plants C.
There's a routine to it to greetand keep the sun always on your face
(03:46):
and late in the day, shesorts through circulars.
The magic image is frozen in two simple
dimensions. If it's windy,
the retriever shifts it here andpresses his body a paperweight,
the calm, the wind-flippedcoupons she'll coo Greek to him,
and if you're lucky, she mightjust speak to you. Excuse me,
(04:10):
what time? Don't worry.If you have no watch,
approximate, she won'tturn you into swine.
She'll bless you in the nameof this God or that God.
They're all the same sun God.
In the end signal signwith a papal gesture,
the retriever will rise, turn and sprawl.
(04:32):
Fur matted, a bit mangyhis paws dangling over the
edge, tail raised like a fern.
This is a far Rockaway MottAvenue bound a local train.
The next stop is Rockaway Boulevard.
(04:54):
The Planes In Howard Beach. It is quiet.
The planes have stopped or I havestopped hearing them when I first
arrived.
They announced themselves likeraucous guests flying so low and
filling my ears and windowsDelta American Aer Lingus
(05:15):
flying cathedrals out of JFK.
The trees would sway off thetrain at Rockaway Boulevard.
I would listen for them as I leftthe roar of trains for their metal
breeze. Instead, I joked witha vendor on Liberty Avenue.
They are so low. I hear the flightattendants laughing in bed at night.
(05:38):
Their shadows roamed my walls forthe short minutes of their ascension.
It took months to get used to the sound.
I'd awakened some nightsthinking I had a bad dream
in winter.
They were shadow soundingin falling snow in summer,
glints of color orheraldry of logos and now I
(06:01):
miss their painted umbrage,the hubris of them.
They became a kind of lullaby for dreams.
People coming home or goingback to places they'd forgotten.
Destination as a cure on Jamaica Bay,
on Linden Boulevard.
I would glance up feeling themeven before they arrived and I
(06:23):
thought of how many times in them I flewover the buildings here on the hope of
soft landings in a future place.
I would live many years ahead.
It seems I traveled toward them.
Some call inside me beckoningthe planes have had their
say.
(06:46):
The next stop is Beach 36th Street.
For Rob. April 15th, 2020by Yasmin Adele Majeed,
written after Hala Allianzfor Jamaica for Ru Rockaway
Beach in the middle of lockdown,the bridge, a lonely route.
(07:07):
Gray skies with scum cloudssliced by telephone wire.
I stay in the car while you deliver themasks and watch an angel fly against
brick. It's called torchemitting stone sparks.
We are skipping work to do this.
The car ticks an errantsong and toll your return.
What can we do but run to thesea, the birth of the city.
(07:29):
I often forget that Queens is an island,
but here at its edge I remember thateven the land is circumscribed too.
In your tanned raincoat, youdisappear against the sand. Miles out,
a red barge floats and I think of cruiseships docked with the sick of workers
stuck at sea. Two months later,
the Oakland Longshoremen shut down theirport and protest and Angela reminds us,
(07:53):
labor is community. It is only April.
The crowds are coming soon andwhen you point out a surfer,
some shadow atop a break, thewind ripples your coat like water,
which moves and cuts and moves.
(08:13):
This is a Manhattan bound M local train.
The next stop is JacksonHeights, Roosevelt Avenue.
Ephphetha By Spencer Reece. Jesus Christ,
my dusty socialist. There'senough sun for everyone.
(08:35):
You state your crown chippedlike a front tooth after a
bar fight behind you,
a red curtain, you are
well hard to tell what you are.
The hymnals boxed intubs in the lady chapel
(08:56):
closed seven months. We opened St.Mark's in Jackson Heights, Queens,
New York City, Queens,
the unnoticed and mocked borough.
Can anything good comeout of Nazareth late
August, sun on the slate and God,
(09:16):
is it hot? Vestry, you interview me.
Who am I?
The wardens Henry andJorge unlock the safe with
the broken Tumblr in the sacristy,
the priest's office window rusted shut,
adjusting surgical masksover our noses to a muffle.
(09:40):
Our voices. We are a wedge.
You move with us.
You always have you and your circumspect
circumference.
The streets jounce with languagesand carts with mango slices and
ziplocs. All of it personal,
(10:02):
none of it personal.
The seven train slides on its rails.
It's a pandemic single king
you beckon from the bucklingblue glass donated by someone
everyone has forgotten.
We sweat and sit with no ac.
(10:27):
My white gura sticks to my pock back
like a sealed envelope.
This is a Forest Hills 71st avenue train.
The stop is Forest Hills. 71st Avenue.
The Visitor (10:49):
A Warning
Bino A. Realuyo.
Even the wisest cannot seethe spoken droplets of a voice
nor smell them. Riding oncebreath afoot to close into open.
Un warned eyes, eyes.
(11:09):
He no longer recalls thecashier's exact words,
but knew them to be airborne and free.
He did not notice the mass line of mouths.
Relieved bad day of pleasure.
In their hearts he got homefeeling nothing but the
aches of a most ordinary day.
(11:31):
TV news was filled with wisdom,
sharp enough to mince meatwords for the wise noted
and perfected by the already distanced.
He the wiser didn't see thesymptoms of a last ritual,
how it smelled of rice and everything,
(11:53):
then rice and nothing,
and then nothing at all.
How it tasted like fading.
Memories of what mattered and didn't
of endings of none. Two,
the nights it came knockingwere a fever and a half a new
(12:16):
memory raging into full shape.
The bed's comfort becamethe killing. Aches,
cuffs bounced like pleasinto the deafened rooms and
nature's gift.
This air a reciprocated air became
harder and harder to unwrap.
(12:40):
What he remembers most is notwhat we the people thought.
All along he did listen.
He did follow masks, gloves.
With the foresight of the wiser,
he washed away tails with cautionary soap,
each stretching graze.
(13:01):
And yet as he always knew,
even the wise and the wiser fall
when they do nothing theystood for is remembered
memories like people divide and divide
until they forget how theybrought forth the visitor,
(13:26):
the wisest of them all from Queens,
New York,
epicenter of epicentersof COVID-19 in the US.
This is a Jamaica 179thstreet bound F local train.
The next stop is 169th Street.
(13:49):
Queens by Shams A. Momin. A moment
many years ago, Eddie Murphy proclaimed
coming to America.
Indeed the prince kept his word and
landed in Queens. There is a Chinatown.
(14:13):
The Chicanos lean on the parking meter,
hang out all evening in front of a bodega.
There is little India anda whole lot of Caribbean
queens. The gossip
Ra or Jello. Who is better at a dance?
(14:37):
Brushed cor, so hard, Waka, Waka,
Pedro and W straight.What's got him today,
Corona or 2020 Mad dog. Who knows?
Here we are like a village.
(14:57):
There are homegrown fish, rice and beans,
hot samosas, sizzlingkebab and mango juice,
momos, gyros, and many more.
Are you black or white, Asian or Hispanic?
No one bothers.
(15:18):
We are here just people without caste,
without a tribe.
It is as if you are in your home.
The familiar is quarreland depar dance and sing to
you the song you left behind
(15:42):
A and f and seven trains.All are queens bound.
So let's hop in and get going.
A boy bend down a tied tohis forehead, shouting.
Let's go.
And it just feels right.
(16:13):
Coming to America, New York,
Chinatown,
(16:35):
Caribbean Queen
(16:57):
2020 Mad dog,
mango juice.
(18:04):
9 2 7 20.
(18:26):
This is a Rockaway park bound A train.
The next stop is Beach 98th Street.
Rockaway Beach.
One year after Hurricane Sandy by
Marcia B. Loughran. It's September again.
(18:47):
Only the dogs go barefoot.
A distracted sun glances back at summer.
Leftover waves bump the shore.
The beach is bigger without the people.
An occasional almondroasted old man deck chair.
Radio points out pilot whales ignoring
(19:12):
the pipeline, which severs the view.
Bulldozers men in hardhats and yellow vests
rebuilding the sand. Castle shore,
a million cubic yards ofsand and broken shells
pumped in from miles away under the ocean
(19:35):
all night. Backhoes beep caution.
Flags fly the parapets ofnew boardwalks named for
streets that dead end in the sand.
This is the opposite of archeology.
We who fear the timelessness of seagulls
(19:58):
try to hold still reconstructing
memory. This is how it was.
Make it how it was.
Jets line up to land at JFK,
the A train rumbles by and always the
(20:19):
shrugging sea.
This is a Flushing MainStreet bound 7 local train.
The next stop is Woodside 61st Street.
Then Here and Will Be by Jimena Lucero.
(20:39):
On Julio Rivera's corner.Magical winds blew.
It was summer pride.
The sky was jeweled and gay Queens
with its savory kitchens andgreen cemeteries can be quiet,
also subtly flashy.
There is a mapping to ourliberation in our neighbors.
(21:05):
On the radio they mentionedthe opening of glitz.
The streets read with critiquesof capitalism and graffiti
organizers at the HIV testing center,
distribute condoms, fruit stands,
pop art by the train station,
(21:27):
big blueberries for $2.
I am sometimes blue.
Then I remember thetime I saw a trans elder
riding her bike and smiling behind her,
her lover.
I was on my walk and carrieda fallen star Magnolia.
(21:52):
The past fruit always finds me.
The past fruit always leads me here.
This is a Forest Hills71st Avenue bound R train.
The next stop is Elmhurst Avenue.
As If It Were Real (22:11):
Part One by Richard Jeffrey Newman.
We're on the platform at ElmhurstAvenue waiting for the R back to
Roosevelt so we don'thave to walk in the rain.
Or maybe we're headed to the Vietnameserestaurant where we first tasted
foe on Broadway and we're walking pastJudge Street where the aunt who never
(22:34):
married on the Irish side of her familystill lived when we were together.
Or maybe this memory isn't real,
but in it since it wouldn't surpriseme and it lives in me as if it were
real.
We're in that neighborhood somewherepublic enough that she lowers her voice as
she leans in close. The lasttime I saw my mother's sister,
(22:57):
she almost whispers. Itwas just the two of us,
me and her sitting in her living roomafter Christmas dinner like we used to
do when I was younger. Do you love him?
She wanted to know himbeing you. Of course,
when I told her yes, she glanced,frowning into the dining room and side.
(23:19):
At least talk to him aboutgetting his nose done.
She locked her gaze on the table.We just cleared as she spoke.
You don't want yourkids to look too Jewish.
This is Leffertss Boulevard.
(23:42):
LASTSTOP LASTSTOP by Nadia Misir.
I slide on the wet underbellyof an abandoned poem,
bruise stanza onto my back,
Dodge nasty track watertrying to baptize my hair.
I swallow a pigeon howling chutneyremixes of Bollywood ballads at
the edge of the platform,
(24:03):
and wait for Leo efforts to call theA train back home for those evergreen
words.
Picking purple figs from mygrandmother's fig tree in my margin of
queen.
And counting the green Heineken bottlesorbiting its trunk is my new religion.
(24:24):
Love. Letter to the train tracks.
I grew up comparing to thesmooth blue lines of loose leaf
love letter to loose leafthat did not turn to dust.
At the touch of an eraserlove letter to margins
love. Letter to the split in theelevated tracks of the A train to
witnessing that moment.Leila Letford Boulevard,
(24:47):
bound a and far rock bound,
a shared track space beforebranching off in different
directions. One for the C,
the other for little Guyana.Is that a line break?
This is a Forest Hills 71st Avenue train.
(25:11):
The is Grand Avenue. Newtown.
Boulevard of Ghosts byNoelle de la Paz for the
frontline, for the essentialfor the far from home.
They say rose, they sayGodfather, say, union soldiers.
The first immigrant, a oncefortunate squanderer of riches.
(25:35):
I run slow in a summer ofsickness on a boulevard of ghosts.
The dead do to enjoy fluffyclouds and Calvary hills,
a famous skyline. Theproximity to an urban center,
though it is in fact too quietfor some of their tastes.
But for the new ones still nursing.Fresh grief. What can it mean to rest?
(26:00):
I've heard stories from thegraveyard parties, from family,
from back home. Noodles andrice cakes and skewers of meat.
Grilled over coals. Feast. Enoughfor everyone on both sides.
Say mother and child, saythe father's son, the holy,
the spirited,
(26:20):
drinking and gambling andsinging and sin. Firecrackers.
Shot. Rattling into the night tojoin the heaven's deadest sars.
I am panting in the bikelane face covered by mask.
Counting the stone sentinelsasleep at their posts.
Nearby the beds fill up, turn cold.
(26:43):
Turnover sickness findsthe heart of a cluster of
nurses. Say Ana.
Behind the cemetery gates, there aretombstones engraved with birthplaces.
It's close to noon and too sunny.
A cold sweat runs down my face and thewind in my ears. Sounds like voices.
(27:07):
Say ilo. Say Gio. Say Manila.
Say, home is where the running stops.
Say ours is where the work ends.
Stand clear of the closing doors please.
Thanks for listening. Tosee the map, hear the poems,
(27:31):
and learn more about our contributorsand about future train readings.
Go to queensbound.com.
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