4X2
an online poetry journal
To rbt
by W. R. Weinstein
Life, friends, is boring
-John Berryman
but not for you
who’d be
here if you could
ever to confess
your interest
in us, poetry,
your urban garden,
Brooklyn
skies, one of those high
immobile ones
you wrote about
and still
I re-
read you, under
a low moving Manhattan
one on my mobile phone
where you speak
still––
“I’m here for all of you,
not myself,”
your urbane voice
urgent after a few
in that underground
no-name bar
no longer on Sixth
no longer
Robert
yet here you are
sending us the latest
from the past:
Lou Reed strums Perfect Day
Chubby Checker twists again
The Chordettes barbershop
Lollipop
Man, I haven’t got a chance
they sing
and you don’t
Poet's Statement: "To rbt" was sparked by a workshop assignment to write a poem to a friend in class. The friend I most wanted to write to had been missing and sorely missed by all who knew him for more than three years, yet was still very much alive in his inventive, expressive poetry and trove of emails. Robert and I shared a love of John Berryman, whose line from The Dream Songs helped me enter the poem.
Bio: W. R. Weinstein’s poems have appeared in Barrow Street and Verse Daily. She holds an M.S. from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is a film critic for Film Journal International. She lives with her husband in New York City.