PROSE POETRY​

ADAM BERLIN
​

---

white out​

It’s great I’m saying, Come out I’m saying, no echo in this insulating storm, not like an arena, name bounced wall to wall. A white-out night white-erasing Manhattan’s lines and I’m walking west heavy-legged through drifts, a fighter in the fifth, too many body shots, and find her door, her buzzer, my finger, and she comes down and her long strides mark the street, her lips kid-smiling, her eyes lit under snow-mascaraed lashes, and we walk the West Village, skidding and
throwing and me shadow-boxing and she’s dancing something elegant, something 4-beat, not speed-bag 3, a waltz, maybe a waltz, and we’re writing words on windshields and sliding streets, 4 straight lines pressing white, my feet and hers, and I stop and look up and she looks too. The sky stares back too close, too much, too weighted gray. Deceptive heaven flakes. And no one’s out. A taxi slows on 7th, windows fogged. Don’t fist, don’t punch, no no, a kid’s repeat 2-beat.
She’s good with me.

---

---

Adam Berlin is the author of four novels, including Belmondo Style (St. Martin’s Press/winner of The Publishing Triangle’s Ferro-Grumley Award) and Both Members of the Club (Texas A&M University Consortium Press/winner of the Clay Reynolds Novella Prize). He teaches writing at John Jay College/CUNY in NYC and co-edits the litmag J Journal: New Writing on Justice.