From New York by Patrick Tong
after Katherine Liu
Central Park is towerless and trailing today, tourists tangling together onto a cul-de-sac lawn. From afar, I steepen my gaze towards the ground, wonder if we could carve a city over the grass. Ways that we would term the turf as territory, our tour guide tells us. He reminds me of his family, how they once took a tent over the green-browning acre as home, unhitched its zipper-pursed mouth with a willow stump, imagined the treetops as a terrace and a token. Those months—irreversible like rainfall, like the currents buoying our ferry later tonight. And now, the ride riffles into a rhythm, carrying the blurred sighs of college kids who could never know about immigration. Not about the earnest designs / redesigns of these ships, nor the fables and falloffs, nor the trudge from hunger to habitat. Instead, we only listen as the hull hustles towards the statues, towards Lady Liberty, towards the island you dreamed through a generation.
Patrick Tong is a writer from the greater Chicago area.