Oh the City & Snowing in April
By Tim Suermondt
OH THE CITY
In our own city, we are exiles
-Harry Clifton
And it’s true—even if we’ve lived
in the city for years, know just about
every street, shop, restaurant, bar
and park and know the names on the statues
of many, helping them out of obscurity.
Elizabeth Bishop claimed there is something,
someone who loves us all—that’s needed
when we’re constantly on the move,
if only in our minds, trying to pinpoint home
to the best of our abilities, wrestling
with the knowledge that we will never find it.
So welcome everyone, welcome yourself—
the shooting stars have nothing on us.
SNOWING IN APRIL
for James Reiss
And falling on every street,
every building we occupied
in the heady days still shining
in the midst of the latter days,
my wife and I lightly sequestered
in another state, a new world.
Last night I dreamt you and I
at a bar, drinking with old Levine
the local butcher, and with Audie
Murphy who’s been forgotten
like the stories we were telling
until I woke up and forced myself
out of bed, your voice whispering
in my ear Reiss rhymes with peace.
Tim Suermondt is the author of five full-length collections of poems, the latest JOSEPHINE BAKER SWIMMING POOL from MadHat Press, 2019. He has published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Stand Magazine, december magazine, On the Seawall, Poet Lore and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.