TO NANCY ON FOURTEENTH STREET

By Pablo Medina

Before the dust and pills,

before the toothless night of insects

and the half-light of the burning street

and all those men consoling you,
 before the ship of fools

and the city of goats

and the gardens of Astoria

where we ate a brown lunch,

you stay in my memory

at the margin of an empty beach,
fibrillating siren with the smoky voice,
 ball of sky, ball of flax, one stone,

one effigy, one razor blade.

Pablo Medina is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently The Island Kingdom and The Man Who Wrote on Water. He is also a novelist, translator and essayist. Currently, he is professor of Fiction and Poetry at Emerson College in Boston.