Julene Tripp Weaver

New York Escape

after Matt Eiford-Schroeder

Everything at once always, said New York City
gloating at how much sits on its solid granite base—
razed so long ago. Its electric lines buried beneath
ground, no ugly wires overhead. We did it all early—
built that subway—one line then the next, we forget 
the order of everything once it arrives—here now,
everything in place, in its decay—it was always 
perfect at the beginning.
 
It’s hard to leave such an everything at once always place 
one gets stuck in the wonder, in awe of the clear sky
narrow between skyscrapers, carrier pigeons inbred 
for sheer cliffs along an ocean, their DNA recalls—deep 
genetics—they taste their insides rotting from old bread 
fed to them by an elder on a park bench. One day 
they rise free. Some of us escape, resettle, take
a deep breath, mingle with other birds, stand on a true
 
cliff. No window washers on platforms, no poison
put out to lure an early death. Here there are no white
flour crackers, no easy food that bloats, here we are prey, 
we forget that everything at once always place,
now with our self, the same life and death, the innate 
satisfaction of the familiar. Landed on sheer rock 
a cliff over an ocean. We perch.


Julene Tripp Weaver is a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle. She has a chapbook and two full size poetry books. Her most recent, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and won the Bisexual Book Award. Her work is widely published in journals and anthologies; a few include The Seattle Review of Books, HIV Here & Now, Mad Swirl, and the Stonewall Legacy Anthology. Find her online at www.julenetrippweaver.com, and on Twitter @trippweavepoet