TO AMICHAI
After the explosion on West 23rd,
I thought of you kissing a lover
on a soon destroyed bridge. Then of me,
the day before with a man
I thought I could love. How can I
do laundry now? If I fold the corners
of each t-shirt or roll the socks into a perfect sphere,
can I save a bit of this city
from the hand of another?
They said the bombs were in the dumpsters.
Maybe the one I leaned against
when I invited him home to Brooklyn.
He said next time and my feigned hope
smiled back. After this, I’d like to believe
there will be places left to kiss.
They said 29 bodies were touched.
After this, confetti in the streets again. After this,
a parade of shrapnel.
Diannely Antigua is a Dominican American poet and educator, born and raised in Massachusetts. She received her B.A. in English from the University of Massachusetts Lowell where she won the Jack Kerouac Creative Writing Scholarship. She is currently an MFA candidate at New York University and an Associate Poetry Editor for BOAAT. A Pushcart Prize nominee and winner of the Bodega Poetry Contest, her work appears or is forthcoming in Cosmonauts Avenue, Reservoir, Day One, Vinyl, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn.