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  • Issue #27 Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Art Spring 2024 >
      • Kristina Erny Spring 2024
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      • Liza Olson Spring 2024
  • Issue #28 Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Art Fall 2024 >
      • Eric Calloway Fall 2024
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      • Catherine Broadwall Fall 2024
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  • Issue #29 Spring 2025
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      • Irina Greciuhina Spring 2025
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    • Issue #29 Poetry Spring 2025 >
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      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
      • ​Ash Bowen Spring 2025
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      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
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      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
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      • JM Huscher Spring 2025
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Jason Koo

BREAK OF DAY, THE GREAT CITY [EXCERPT]


I

Django is watching Joy sweep up in the garden.

The sweeping stops and he looks around, then
Back, as if hoping it will begin again.

Is she even out there anymore?

There, moving some plants around.
A blur to him through the lace of the curtains.

Now he goes to the window and paws up the pane

To peek through, then gets down and shuffles away
Before I can look up while writing this down.

Into the bedroom for a nap.

In this same silence I am reading a novel.

I lay in bed not tired anymore
But not wanting to get up,

Trying to think of something to read that would get me
Out of bed.

I thought of Henry Miller, but the middle of Black Spring was
Boring me.

Lyn Hejinian, no.
Book of poetry, no.

The new James Salter.

Remembered a girl I was excited about
Who brought Salter up, asking me if I knew him,

And right there I thought maybe

But then she said she’d read an essay he wrote on writing
And didn’t like it.

That was a falling.

All day and night little fallings throughout the city,

People failing each other gently, disappointing.

Yesterday three complete meals out:

Breakfast with a friend’s wife visiting the city,
Lunch with an old girlfriend,
Dinner with girlfriend and family.

At all three the same complaints, variations on the same theme:

Coffee, eggs, bloody Mary
Disappointing,

Arugula & tomato salad, lobster bisque—Is this lobster piss?--
Disappointing,

“Sawyer” soju cocktail, Old Overholt Old Fashioned,
Glenlivet neat at the family’s brownstone

Disappointing.

Girlfriend’s sister explains the difference between neat
And straight-up. Straight up now tell me, I remember that song.

Earlier the old girlfriend explained
That a “bisque” did not require chunks of lobster meat, as those were a
     garnish.

Okay.
You sent it away, not even caring if you had to pay.

And in this fashion you went from I to you to what to then to how to no to
     yes to so.

Met the old girlfriend’s new baby daughter.
Alex? you asked, thinking of the boyfriend in college you stole her away from.

No, Alice, like Wonderland.
Big baby blue eyes—is this where we get “baby blue”?

You tickled the bottom of her feet, so smooth, like booties
But actual feet. She almost died of Infant Botulism.

You thought what you heard was Infant Botticellism,
Maybe a disease of splendiferous fatness.

The romance of the city, I out there youing it,
Running to meet the old girlfriend for lunch because you were late,

Remembering how once you ran to meet her
After your first long separation over Christmas.

Salter on the page, cruising through the turns
Of his prose, evoking Break of Day, The Great City.

Only a master can execute those chapters.

And now more insistent sunlight through the windows,
A harshness, and as if on cue the grinding of the workers outside commences.

ECLIPSE


Those days we’d go to yoga, then get Huevos a la Mexicana
At Eclipse, the one gentrified restaurant on 4th Avenue.
If we paid to get chorizo scrambled in, the eggs were perfect.

You worked at a small studio on 36th, the first yoga studio
In the neighborhood, which struggled to attract non-white students.
We were a sign the neighborhood was changing. We were,

In fact, probably helping to kill it. But it didn’t feel like that.
You put so much planning into your classes, all the expert details
Proliferating in my body. Spent hours constructing playlists

To go with the poses. I met you as you auditioned for Jenya,
Whose Jivamukti ways scared you a little, the two of us the only
Students in her class. Everything was effortless on your mat.

Afterward we talked outside and I noticed your eyes, the green
In them picked out by the light. You laughed and lingered.
I dragged myself out of bed to go to your 7 AM class in the cold

One morning, hoping to see you alone, but you didn’t show up.
No one had been coming and you begged me to come so you wouldn’t
Have to spend another morning alone wrapped in blankets

On the studio floor. Then when somebody finally showed up
(Me), you didn’t. You felt guilty, so, sensing my opportunity,
I got you to agree to have coffee. Our whole relationship grew

From that guilt. When I picked you up I was extra dressed up
And you seemed taken aback, calling me “fancy.” You wore
Ripped jeans and your mom’s old corduroy coat, one leather button

Hanging by a thread. I said I always dressed like that for work,
But that wasn’t true. We took the train to Colson Patisserie
In Park Slope because there was no coffee shop in Sunset Park.

We sat outside in a slight drizzle sprinkling through the sun.
Finally moved inside when the rain got to be too much.
We talked for two hours, mostly about yoga, poetry, painting,

Van Gogh and Cezanne in particular. You said you hated
Hopper and Monet. Not once did you bring up the someone
You supposedly were seeing. I knew then that it was a lie.



--
Jason Koo is the author of two collections of poetry, America's Favorite Poem and Man on Extremely Small Island. An assistant teaching professor of English at Quinnipiac University, Koo is also the founder and executive director of Brooklyn Poets and creator of The Bridge. He lives in Brooklyn.

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  • Home
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  • Issue #27 Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Art Spring 2024 >
      • Kristina Erny Spring 2024
      • Luiza Maia Spring 2024
      • Christy Lee Rogers Spring 2024
      • Erika Lynet Salvador Spring 2024
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Poetry Spring 2024 >
      • Terry Belew Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Diamond Forde Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Caridad Moro-Gronlier Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Charlie Coleman Spring 2024
      • Isabelle Doyle Spring 2024
      • Reyzl Grace Spring 2024
      • Kelly Gray Spring 2024
      • Meredith Herndon Spring 2024
      • Mina Khan Spring 2024
      • Anoushka Kumar Spring 2024
      • Cate Latimer Spring 2024
      • BEE LB Spring 2024
      • Grace Marie Liu​ Spring 2024
      • Sarah Mills Spring 2024
      • Faisal Mohyuddin 2024
      • Marcus Myers Spring 2024
      • Mike Puican Spring 2024
      • Sarah Sorensen Spring 2024
      • Lynne Thompson Spring 2024
      • Natalie Tombasco Spring 2024
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2024
      • Donna Vorreyer Spring 2024
    • Fiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Bryan Betancur Spring 2024
      • Karen George Spring 2024
      • Raja'a Khalid Spring 2024
      • Riley Manning Spring 2024
      • Adina Polatsek Spring 2024
      • Beth Sherman Spring 2024
    • Nonfiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Liza Olson Spring 2024
  • Issue #28 Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Art Fall 2024 >
      • Eric Calloway Fall 2024
      • Matthew Fertel Fall 2024
      • JooLee Kang Fall 2024
      • Jian Kim Fall 2024
      • Robb Kunz Fall 2024
      • Sean Layh Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Poetry Fall 2024 >
      • Jodi Balas Fall 2024
      • Clayre Benzadón Fall 2024
      • Catherine Broadwall Fall 2024
      • Sara Burge Fall 2024
      • Judith Chalmer Fall 2024
      • Stephanie Choi Fall 2024
      • Sarah Jack Fall 2024
      • Jen Karetnick Fall 2024
      • Ae Hee Lee Fall 2024
      • Svetlana Litvinchuk Fall 2024
      • Mary Lou Buschi Fall 2024
      • Angie Macri Fall 2024
      • Gary McDowell Fall 2024
      • Sam Moe Fall 2024
      • Camille Newsom Fall 2024
      • Elizabeth O'Connell- Thompson Fall 2024
      • Olatunde Osinaike Fall 2024
      • Jessica Pierce Fall 2024
      • Diane Raptosh Fall 2024
      • Isaac Richards Fall 2024
      • Robyn Schelenz Fall 2024
      • Christopher Shipman Fall 2024
      • Alex Tretbar Fall 2024
      • Ruth Williams Fall 2024
      • Shannon K. Winston Fall 2024
      • Wendy Wisner Fall 2024
      • Anne Gerard Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Fiction Fall 2024 >
      • J​oe Baumann Fall 2024
      • ​Morganne Howell Fall 2024
      • Matt Paczkowski Fall 2024
      • Ryan Peed Fall 2024
      • Gabriella Pitts Fall 2024
      • James Sullivan Fall 2024
  • Issue #29 Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Art Spring 2025 >
      • Irina Greciuhina Spring 2025
      • Jesse Howard Spring 2025
      • Paul Simmons Spring 2025
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2025
      • Elzbieta Zdunek Spring 2025
      • Na Yoon Amelia Cha-Ryu Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Poetry Spring 2025 >
      • Deborah Bacharach Spring 2025
      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
      • ​Ash Bowen Spring 2025
      • Christian J. Collier Spring 2025
      • ​Shou Jie Eng Spring 2025
      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
      • Matthew Gilbert Spring 2025
      • Tammy C. Greenwood Spring 2025
      • Alejandra Hernández ​Spring 2025
      • Ben Kline ​Spring 2025
      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
      • ​Tamer Mostafa Spring 2025
      • ​Rongfei Mu Spring 2025
      • Cynthia Neely Spring 2025
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2025
      • ​Bleah Patterson Spring 2025
      • ​M.A. Scott Spring 2025
      • ​Liam Strong ​ Spring 2025
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2025
      • ​Cassandra Whitaker Spring 2025
      • Angelique Zobitz Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Fiction Spring 2025 >
      • Vanessa Blakeslee Spring 2025
      • K. J. Coyle Spring 2025
      • Meredith MacLeod Davidson Spring 2025
      • Jessica Mosher Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Nonfiction Spring 2025 >
      • JM Huscher Spring 2025
      • Qurrat ul Ain Raza Abbas Spring 2025