Brooklyn Triangle
Monica Wendel
You know, our brains are different.
They can measure these things. It shows up
in the blood of mosquitoes & air conditioner
drippings. The chemicals. Outside the poultry plant
are cloudy feathers & the smell of vinegar.
Last year a street fair to celebrate Italian veterans
set up a zeppole stand right there. Powdered sugar
everywhere. I put a $4 tip down last night
after you paid for the beers. I threw duct tape
in an art gallery. My friend stripped.
I wouldn’t slap her ass. And you were there,
watching. I don’t know why we did what we did
except that someone else wrote it.
And since it was already written we were free. I like
your paintings. I wish I told you about the dream
of Coney Island. I was at the stop on the F train
when it’s highest above the canal. I could see the city.
The art gallery wasn’t orange like the train –
the show was black and white. How come the sky
never appears in my dreams? I liked it that time
at the beach when we were on mushrooms
and you said they tasted so good – they really did.
Monica Wendel is the author of No Apocalypse, forthcoming from Georgetown Review Press, and the chapbook Call It a Window (Midwest Writing Center, 2012). A graduate of NYU’s MFA in Creative Writing Program, she has taught creative writing at Goldwater Hospital, St. Mary’s Health Care Center for Kids, and NYU, and is currently a visiting instructor of composition at St. Thomas Aquinas College. Her work has also appeared in, or is forthcoming from, Bellevue Literary Review, Catch-Up, Drunken Boat, Forklift, Ohio, H_NGM_N, InDigest, Jellyroll, Limestone, Nimrod, Paperbag Blog, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Staccato Fiction. She lives in Brooklyn.