Current Curation
Issue 4:
Lindsay Dragan
Perspective
It is a sunrise or a forest fire.
There is not enough sympathy
to go around anymore, I think,
as we evacuate our houses of happy.
Couples married seventy years
exhausted, hold hands as they wait
for the flames, but it’s usually the smoke first.
Thanks for your body, thanks for nothing,
says the world,
and that’s why my husband says he won’t retire,
because it’s dying and knowing it.
It is a sunrise or a forest fire.
The promise of shaking the shell
off of this old day into the new,
the first breath of the morning,
breathing exercises for singing,
dilation of the capillaries with the
rush of caffeine. The air is always
sweeter in the morning. And I have to
believe in it, you know. It will
keep going just like we must.
Vigil
When she calls at night,
she wants to know if I’m safe.
And I get it, now.
Perceived/Actual
I unroll:
Women
Are
Made
For
Cleaning
Up
The
Mistakes
Of
Boys.
Understand:
There are no men.
Human Nature School Report
Capture rate of a jumble of bones offering strong evidence of the search for happiness and
student stability rate. Termite mounds in the delta and 40 possible new species of systemic
sexism abound. A cadre of people in the floodplain did not meet the standard. Fire is a natural
part of grassland and forest cycles and he groped me because of boredom. The pre-engineering
magnet program is slurring their words again. Charcoal-making for the fire-driven hunting is a
storm that is coming in three years’ time. Imagining themselves as next year’s champion, the
school climate is ideal. Sixty-six percent of students were chronically absent.
July in a Brooklyn apartment
Every season will end eventually.
I dream by nine in the morning
of steaming cups of coffee
and that nip in the air, where I won't
feel guilty about running the AC
and contributing to strain on the grid.
I dream of sliding into my old pink robe,
the one I've had since undergrad,
watching my daughter stack blocks
in a fleece sleeper. When we walk
down the street, people aren't angry,
because they aren't wilting
like the burning, earthy leaves
over a cool Autumn night.
Particulate Matter
I woke this morning to the smell of sulfur
on the nose, in the air, reminded
When smokestacks kept vigil over
the rivers, darkening
the sky like harbinger advent candles. I wen
through the day, the haze filtering the distant city,
reminded when they pushbroomed
soot off the streets. When history
remembers itself, it remembers the country
estates and Fourth of July parties with
“Liberty Punch” in crystalline glass
that will sing you a song as the fireworks pop off.
It forgets the inversions, the damaged airways,
the ash clinging to the stone, the rivers on fire,
the suffocating exploitation.
Because these, too, are part of the good ol’ days.
Comfort Feed
I will stop nursing
But I will always
slip in
To check
your breathing.
Open City
The kind of fog that isn’t really fog:
the factory lets off over the weekend,
still, something in my bones hums -
the tubes in an old amplifier
when I see the sunrise over the river.
I think I had to be gone
for awhile
to love this place. I used to
find my street and walk down it
just to feel the bricks under my boots,
and then feel frustrated that the street
would end. If you followed that street a little while longer
in your car, you’d find an old ice cream shop,
wrapped in silver as gaudy as vintage
Christmas tinsel, that’s been open since the
1940s. You can find a lot of those places,
but now there’s a lot of new, like the city
finally decided to be an open city after the
iron curtain fell. I guess I became one of those
outsiders when I went away. Kind of. I learned
some things that you can only learn when you
leave home. Perspective. How things are done
Elsewhere. Not everywhere else takes Christmas
so seriously. But I’m glad it does here. I’m glad
to see old buildings being re-purposed, people
starting businesses, families, making art.
This is home, now. Finally, it’s everything
Home should be.
Editor's Note:
The editor feels lucky enough to have gone to graduate school with this featured author. She
fell in love with Lindsay Dragan's work almost immediately and has been a fan of her poetry
and her music ever since. The editor was glad to extend an invitation to her to send work;
happier that she said yes. Dragan is a Pittsburgh poet, an urban poet, a small fierce dragon
poet, a poet in love with city spaces. The work she does in interpreting urban spaces and their
connection with a natural world, allows us to feel it in new ways. We see its hard edges and its
undeniable charm in the way it moves within our lives. A new mother, Dragan's work also
reflects the navigation of this new space in the similar raw and vulnerable style she uses in her
work about urban environments. Examples of both are displayed here.
Lindsay Dragan is a musician and poet living in Pittsburgh, PA. A graduate of Pitt and
Northern Arizona University, she spent her 20s playing music in New York City and
elsewhere. She returned to also writing poems after the birth of her daughter in 2016. She
loves Pittsburgh sports teams, craft beer, and Italian Greyhounds. Find her online here.
Perspective
It is a sunrise or a forest fire.
There is not enough sympathy
to go around anymore, I think,
as we evacuate our houses of happy.
Couples married seventy years
exhausted, hold hands as they wait
for the flames, but it’s usually the smoke first.
Thanks for your body, thanks for nothing,
says the world,
and that’s why my husband says he won’t retire,
because it’s dying and knowing it.
It is a sunrise or a forest fire.
The promise of shaking the shell
off of this old day into the new,
the first breath of the morning,
breathing exercises for singing,
dilation of the capillaries with the
rush of caffeine. The air is always
sweeter in the morning. And I have to
believe in it, you know. It will
keep going just like we must.
Vigil
When she calls at night,
she wants to know if I’m safe.
And I get it, now.
Perceived/Actual
I unroll:
Women
Are
Made
For
Cleaning
Up
The
Mistakes
Of
Boys.
Understand:
There are no men.
Human Nature School Report
Capture rate of a jumble of bones offering strong evidence of the search for happiness and
student stability rate. Termite mounds in the delta and 40 possible new species of systemic
sexism abound. A cadre of people in the floodplain did not meet the standard. Fire is a natural
part of grassland and forest cycles and he groped me because of boredom. The pre-engineering
magnet program is slurring their words again. Charcoal-making for the fire-driven hunting is a
storm that is coming in three years’ time. Imagining themselves as next year’s champion, the
school climate is ideal. Sixty-six percent of students were chronically absent.
July in a Brooklyn apartment
Every season will end eventually.
I dream by nine in the morning
of steaming cups of coffee
and that nip in the air, where I won't
feel guilty about running the AC
and contributing to strain on the grid.
I dream of sliding into my old pink robe,
the one I've had since undergrad,
watching my daughter stack blocks
in a fleece sleeper. When we walk
down the street, people aren't angry,
because they aren't wilting
like the burning, earthy leaves
over a cool Autumn night.
Particulate Matter
I woke this morning to the smell of sulfur
on the nose, in the air, reminded
When smokestacks kept vigil over
the rivers, darkening
the sky like harbinger advent candles. I wen
through the day, the haze filtering the distant city,
reminded when they pushbroomed soot off the streets. When history remembers itself, it remembers the country
reminded when they pushbroomed soot off the streets. When history remembers itself, it remembers the country
estates and Fourth of July parties with
“Liberty Punch” in crystalline glass that will sing you a song as the fireworks pop off. It forgets the inversions, the damaged airways, the ash clinging to the stone, the rivers on fire, the suffocating exploitation. Because these, too, are part of the good ol’ days.
“Liberty Punch” in crystalline glass that will sing you a song as the fireworks pop off. It forgets the inversions, the damaged airways, the ash clinging to the stone, the rivers on fire, the suffocating exploitation. Because these, too, are part of the good ol’ days.
Comfort Feed
I will stop nursing
But I will always
slip in
To check
your breathing.
Open City
The kind of fog that isn’t really fog:
the factory lets off over the weekend,
still, something in my bones hums -
the tubes in an old amplifier
when I see the sunrise over the river.
I think I had to be gone
for awhile
to love this place. I used to
find my street and walk down it
just to feel the bricks under my boots,
and then feel frustrated that the street
would end. If you followed that street a little while longer
in your car, you’d find an old ice cream shop,
wrapped in silver as gaudy as vintage
Christmas tinsel, that’s been open since the
1940s. You can find a lot of those places,
but now there’s a lot of new, like the city
finally decided to be an open city after the
iron curtain fell. I guess I became one of those
outsiders when I went away. Kind of. I learned
some things that you can only learn when you
leave home. Perspective. How things are done
Elsewhere. Not everywhere else takes Christmas
so seriously. But I’m glad it does here. I’m glad
to see old buildings being re-purposed, people
starting businesses, families, making art.
This is home, now. Finally, it’s everything
Home should be.
Editor's Note:
The editor feels lucky enough to have gone to graduate school with this featured author. She
fell in love with Lindsay Dragan's work almost immediately and has been a fan of her poetry
and her music ever since. The editor was glad to extend an invitation to her to send work;
happier that she said yes. Dragan is a Pittsburgh poet, an urban poet, a small fierce dragon
poet, a poet in love with city spaces. The work she does in interpreting urban spaces and their
connection with a natural world, allows us to feel it in new ways. We see its hard edges and its
undeniable charm in the way it moves within our lives. A new mother, Dragan's work also
reflects the navigation of this new space in the similar raw and vulnerable style she uses in her
work about urban environments. Examples of both are displayed here.
Lindsay Dragan is a musician and poet living in Pittsburgh, PA. A graduate of Pitt and
Northern Arizona University, she spent her 20s playing music in New York City and
elsewhere. She returned to also writing poems after the birth of her daughter in 2016. She
loves Pittsburgh sports teams, craft beer, and Italian Greyhounds. Find her online here.