TWO POEMS by SAMUEL LANG BUDIN
september peach
september peach: ripe, but not tasty / a woman on the train trying to spell mitchell-lama / olive oil, yellow green, spilt salt, split pea, lexapro 5mg / sitting on the couch at the gen z poetry reading browsing milf porn on my phone / m. asking if i want a bite then shoving a third of a taco into my mouth /
a small child being strolled into a bakery chanting, “cheese, cheese” / broth, sausage, broccoli, 6” shallowish little basket / east village making me lonely / hate it when my therapist asks me to explain myself / on the 2 train at 42nd street micromanaging my expectations / upper west side making me lonely / watching my aunt layer honey and fig chevre on top of my sister in law’s searing bukharian eggplant and garlic spread / and not saying a word /
east williamsburg making me lonely / feels personal / east midwood making me lonely / christmas radish, errant socklet / handing a guy on the train a dollar and getting a “respect, mami” in return / central maspeth making me unutterably lonely / 57-54 grocery corp rebranding itself as the plant milk deli / who among you knows as I do the melancholic joys of rust street? /
sunday night dream about a financial seminar, the instructor telling me to take on massive debt / instagram trying to sell me a used shipping container / arriving at the infinite motel and the “no vacancy” sign is lit
/ thinking about the mountain. thinking about the lake. isn’t
it already enough. a past that is experienced in the present \
confounding number of teslas parked outside the brooklyn heights firehouse / green like lichen, like copper / like a new leaf / eddies of pulverized salt skimming over hunters point avenue / roastables, basil, something else, cod / new york route n9 making me lonely and nostalgic / double whammy / within a diner, all geometry is sacred geometry / the pharmaceutical brand name jardiance cascading through my mentality /
fly bouncing off my nose on rust street / spiteful wind filling my mouth with dust / enya advertising air mattresses with a waterfall and rocks / raising the bar lower, every day / instagram trying to sell me dental implant screws and calling me “doctor” / feels personal / therapist calling my intrusive thought diary a “real fetishization of negativity” / might actually be personal / chanting “diaper army” in a crowd outside the united nations while an nypd drone hovers overhead and the led screen on a passing taxi top fades from hostage faces to an ad for tito’s vodka
the state of poetry
i was at a performance event talking with a friend who works for an influential arts organization about the state of poetry / talk is expensive / sex is cheap / imagine you were a poet and you could only communicate with other poets & then only through verse / wheel following cart-drawn ox / conation, danferon, tan humente / most people think beauty is the capital of the state of poetry but it’s not / the capital of the state of poetry is loss / which may be the same thing as truth / the performer at the event skewered my friend’s boss, verbally / the whole room shrieked with glee /
i will tell you what / this march i spent two weeks with a cat in greenpoint / during which i kept for once my vernal commitment to visit a tree morning and evening and watch its leaves emerge / fall and spring the clouds become wrenching, tremendous / muchebrows, pun loom, confralate minims / all winter the flowers and bulbs are dreadful / and these lengthening days i must remind myself: this is their season / the moment of the earthquake i was halfway through putting a cover on a duvet / already seasick and disoriented / you won’t catch me alluding to the act of writing within a poem /
maybe some day my two poet-nemeses and i will all find ourselves at the same cocktail party / and we will circulate within the room warily avoiding one another’s eyes / i dread this unlikelihood more than i dread known and certain parties / even back when i could drink i wasn’t any good at it / prante peinuine / with what misgivings should one join a club that would have one as a member /
the distance between the outer limits of loss and beauty has been growing ever smaller and they will be joined together any day now due to urban sprawl / a crash, most mewn, terrible to witch / but: there is a moss-sprung crack in the sidewalk / and there, a shaded rock under the oak by the train tracks at the far edge of the skate park / and there, a fenced in corner wrought with ivy / and i am looking for something in it
Samuel Lang Budin (he/they) is a composer, photographer, poet, and performer. Their work has been seen and heard at BAM, MoMA PS1, the Queens Museum, UnionDocs, and Philadelphia's Center for Art in Wood. They hold an MFA from Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College and were co-editor of their high school lit mag.