Poem of the Month

Dropping a Name

Who were you when they sat around you? You had on a red skirt and braids in your hair. You waxed philosophic while drinking Pierre Joris’ wife’s white wine with a strawberry in it. You were just years out of suburbia but Charles Bernstein was at the party and you thought you should be known to him. You were sleeping with someone – Paul – a poet who turned out to be a beast. And you were leaving for South Africa soon. You had turned your whole world into a Burroughs painting, some interpretation of the Chelsea Hotel but always aware, it was the poor man’s Chelsea, Albany, NY, with poets who posed, with fuzzy eye-browed men of aged notoriety who kissed you on the lips good night. Who listened at you as you got drunker and drunker and spoke to them of meaning. Years later an engaged reporter for a Washington newspaper kissed you on New Years in Philadelphia before reporting on the Mummers Parade. Another night when you were just drunk enough to need to tell him how much it means to write, to read. How it all still matters. Then, like the others, he kisses you and you never see him again.

-Nina Alvarez