top of page
Writer's pictureHOW Blog

2nd Place Winner of the 🌞 Summer Poetry Contest $450: Human Sounds - Katherine Chase

I’m hounded

By the sound

Of these confounded

City streets

And blocks,

And even walks

Don’t calm me down anymore.

 

I rejoice in the voices:

The city’s

Version

of surround sound—

 

Coughs, clearing throats

French, Spanish, Italian

A baby chokes on his laugh

And his mom

Exits the store with a cortado

And a quarter falls

From her wallet

The sweltering heat

Swallowing the zink 

Of the coin hitting

The sidewalk

 

I hear

I see

I feel

I smell

I try to tell

The difference

Between what I know

And what is new

I sit like a sculpture

Silent and still and stony

These pigeons

(like vultures, shitting,

In sympatico

With the babies

throwing crumbs)

 

Thank yous and you are welcomes

Pepper conversation

Two lovers

too deep an infatuation

On their faces

 

A boy trips

On his untied

Lace

His mother stoops

To make two

bunny loops

To tie them again. . .

 

Here! the church,

Here! the steeple,

open the door

And hear a people

who walk

who weep

and eye

you—


[1] This poem comprises words overheard while I was sitting on a bench outside a coffee shop on East 88th street, Manhattan New York. I took all the words I overheard and scrambled the letters. I then used only those letters to write this poem. Each letter in this poem was a sound uttered by a human being.

 

Katherine’s day job provides ample fodder for her writing: she uses quotidian experiences to take down ideas, however and whenever she can. She lives, works, and writes in New York City. She received her Master of Arts in English and American Literature from New York University and teaches first year writing and literature at Queens College, CUNY and Marymount Manhattan College.

234 views0 comments

Comments


bottom of page