PROSE POETRY
ADAM BERLIN
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.
