New York, New York, New York, New York, New York

Our souls too big for us,
our laugh, hands, sex too big for us,

we’re coming, dragging excess skin that looks,
in dim light, like flowers. Coming

to tear you down whenever
our eyes close. Coming,

when they startle open,
to have failed. That’s what need is now:

grabbing and then checking to see
what it is you are holding.

We want only the bold and shapeless,
only the rare as in bloody.

We don’t know what it is.
It rings, though, and can afford

to be made of glass. The people around us
sharpen slowly like teeth

in a mouth so crowded
it must remain open.

That is what we must stand in.
The dark rooms and the bright.

The little girls and their absence.
We’re coming to smell the way people

touch one another once they’ve left
everyone behind. We’re bringing the symphonies

we can finally mount onto our violins.
We’re coming to be so nearly pierced

by buildings that miss us all around. Soon
we won’t know anything

but that thrill. We’ll eat
and not know what we’ve eaten.

We’ll lie in dark liquids and whisper to you
of our swelling.

Catie Rosemurgy lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her second poetry collection, The Stranger Manual, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Award for Emerging Female Writers and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. She teaches creative writing at The College of New Jersey