by Christopher Citro
By the bed and last thing at night, first thing
in damp daylight, I consult. On rare occasion
I might add. Making love in the long grass
near the river, a vulture’s shadow crept across
her face while I was in the middle of it,
and I looked away. That went near the top.
Those afternoons with everything crashing
around me, watching through café windows—
when I stepped outside, the smell of wet streets
and dripping trees. I did not inhale enough.
Years later, trying to recall it is like reading
through water. So I’ll have to forgive myself
for that, for letting the domino rally lull me
asleep. I saw a woman on the street yelling
at a man who did not step back. He opened
his arms, I’m a lover not a fighter, and hugged her.
Both drunk as September. Most of October,
me forgiving myself for being surprised.
Christopher Citro’s poetry appears or is forthcoming in Salamander, Cream City Review, Los Angeles Review, Southeast Review, The Minnesota Review, Poetry East, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. He is a past recipient of a Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award for poetry. Recent broadsides of his poetry are available from Architrave Press, Broadsided, and Thrush Press. Christopher is currently completing an MFA in poetry at Indiana University. Find him at christophercitro.com.
Williamsburg, Brooklyn – Zebulon (258 Wythe): James Brown dance party w/DJs Jonathan Toubin and James Chance plus a live performance by JAMES CHANCE AND THE J.C.’S (playing 2/3 James Brown and 1/3 Contortions songs! Supergroup featuring James Chance, Ivan Julian (Richard Hell and the Voidoids), Robert Aaron (avant-jazz legend who’s also played with everyone from B-52s and Blondie to Afrika Bambataa and Wu Tang Clan), Kim Clark (Defunkt and dozens of jazz projects), and Richard Dworkin [James White and the Blacks, Alex Chilton, etc), JAMES CHANCE SOLO, JAIL BAIT, and more at Zebulon…
Sol LeWitt knew that artists of many diverse types use simple forms to their own ends. Musician and multimedia artist, Morgan Packard believes that simple rules, when allowed to unfold, create the splendor of the world. In Euclidean geometry the simplest non-curved flat shape is the triangle, and the simplest non-curved three-dimensional shape is four triangles connected by their edges—the tetrahedron. In this crowd-sourced artwork the public is invited to create tetrahedrons from recycled office paper and a few pieces of tape while musicians perform. Under Morgan’s direction the participants will attach the vertices of the tetrahedrons to create a constantly expanding sculpture, filling the gallery with a geometric wonderland intersected by sonic vibrations.
The 22 Magazine 
