Bryce Berkowitz is the author of the poetry collection Bermuda Ferris Wheel, recipient of the AMC TV Pilot Award at the Austin Film Festival, and Co-Director of the MFA Creative Writing program at Butler University. His writing has appeared in Best New Poets, The Sewanee Review, The Missouri Review, and other publications. Find him at: www.bryceberkowitz.com
In the next room, a 6 year old screeches like a red-tailed hawk battling in one of his animal tournaments. Meanwhile over at the keyboard, my memories unfold in fits and starts: rapping under yellow streetlights, hustling to the brick apartments on Monroe, swiffering the parquet floors, slipping into PK's for just one more, dancing in a parking lot at 3 am, then going to after hours because who says no? When is enough enough? Enough haunted past. Enough dying future. Enough starlings. Enough skeletons under a pile of roses. Enough mothers weren’t good enough. Enough fathers weren’t there. Enough pomade. Enough smoke. Enough twisted like cocktails between the sheets of the afternoon. Enough back and forth in a war over owning lost things. Was it a vortex or was it heaven? The outsiders always want to know. Of course—enough!—it was both. If you were there at the time—for the original Hangar 9 on Dollar Night, on Hip Hop Night—then you know how the song goes, when the moon rose, where the coyotes howl over that low-low prairie from summer to winter to summer again, until you finally leave—one way or another. Down the hatch. Pour some out for the ones we’ve lost. Water the beds for the ones we raise. Say a prayer. Sing it. Scream. It was all a dream… Now what can I say about the ones who lived? It’s magic the way broccoli grows into a crown.
Volume 16.2, Summer 26
Bryce Berkowitz
