THE OFFICE FOR HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
bring up a handful
from the place that refills
known by its tuning and never voted out
meet me at our coffee
the one we found once
the world will be burned
before it is given away
as intended
how much pain in
how many places can spread
how far
what is it like when you can’t find a tree
what is beneath these hollow streets
not the banded foliated hornblende beneath all the harborage
but the things we unthink to make life livable
CLEAN CITY MATH
In 2017, a mine resistant vehicle worth $658,000 was transferred
from the US Army to the New York City Police Department.
”Transferred” indicates a no-cost hand-off of surplus U.S.
Department of Defense property from military inventory to a
civilian law-enforcement agency.
Pasolini wrote that “the Italian Communist Party is a clean
country in a dirty country.”
The IOF and New York construction crews both use Caterpillar
and JCB backhoes.
An Israeli firm, Electra, won an 800 million dollar contract to
build the electro-mechanical system of the Queens Borough Jail.
I got a fruit slushie from Shan Fu for twelve dollars: mango
blueberry strawberry peach.
A helicopter has been hovering above Seward Park for three
hours.
The steroid epidural I was given reaches full strength at two
weeks and the effects of which may last for a month or two.
There is currently no co-pay on my managed Medicaid, but in a
few weeks, the payouts to ICE and Israel will make my leg numb
forever.
No food or medicine in the clean and dirty city.
FLOWERS ERASE THEMSELVES
man has become death
have you heard?
flowers erase themselves, afraid of time
your car does not run so you walk around
the trees bloom but I don’t know when
the birds knocked out the fruit while you bargained with guards
the delivery bikes are parked up tight like a comb
and the ships that bring us our goods have never gotten smaller
Sasha Frere-Jones is a musician and writer from New York. These three poems are taken from Pistachios and Frames, which will be published in 2027 by Fonograf Editions.