Weinstein

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.