Rowan Ricardo Phillips
Three Poems
Then a sole sparrow, numb and poetic
Then a sole sparrow, numb and poetic,
Wrapped tight in fat trust funds and dangled from leaves
Says, O how the moon’s so moot and beautiful,
That gelled stranger to the cellphone towers,
Big as the sea. There were too many birds
In its tree then too many trees for one
Bird and then nowhere near enough trees seen
In the mountains in the eye of the bird.
Have you ever looked a bird in the eye?
It is the opposite of poetry,
Which is poetry: the death-in-life glare,
Which is the apposite of poetry.
Both the sparrow and poetry would kill
Me if they could, and who’s to say they can’t,
Or that they’re not already taking turns
Tempting me closer with their throbs of song.
Rowan Ricardo Phillips reads “Then a sole sparrow, numb and poetic”
The poem that knows the curse of the poet
The poem that knows the curse of the poet
Who discovered the cosmos on the sidewalk
Instead of finding cash. All those novas
And nebulae tucked in linty pockets.
Manhattan drinks you up like a bottle
Of chilled Syrah as you cling to the world,
Draft slightly in the pink teat of the glass
Pooling in a lingering sense of self.
I see them, starved to be the syllabus,
Gathering in patient constellations
Of administrative isolations,
Getting the green light for nice phrases like
We need poetry now more than ever.
If you have used this phrase and I know you,
Yes, I’m talking about you. But let’s keep
This between us. People are listening.
Rowan Ricardo Phillips reads “The poem that knows the curse of the poet”
Red Hook rises from pianos and plague
Red Hook rises from pianos and plague
Counting its paces and making faces.
IKEA and Amazon vitamined,
A project of projects and tangerine
Installation, key lime pie on a stick,
Nouveau old-school barbeque, young Melo,
Etctera in the twilight sigh
Of fast ferries coming in from the cold.
Flood-prey in the nook of New York Harbor,
This fragile flame in a fragile frame,
Why do I sing of you now at this
Hour of last beers, red mist, and lonely?
Then again, why is no kind of question
For poetry. How, when, if, will,
But why doesn’t exist, why is a waste
Of time. And Red Hook has no time for that.
Rowan Ricardo Phillips reads “Red Hook rises from pianos and plague”
Rowan Ricardo Phillips is the author, most recently, of Silver (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024).