Robert Wood Lynn

RIDING OVER THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE

You were gone and I cherished the worst of it. Dollar pizza
and mistaking the water for asphalt at night. I was over
or at least overtired though there was still half a city to go
and my little bicycle wasn’t sorry, not even capable of saying it.
I admired its impression of you. That year nothing happened
as it was supposed. All things paused and some things ended
and I watched them both with envy. Another spoke snapped
in the middle of the bridge and I was reduced like a fraction.
I would walk it without understanding. My friends had all gone
home with their exes so the night squealed like a firework
ascending forever before it explodes, which is my favorite part.
Looking down I could see the glint of the river all the way
through the wood slats and I realized there was nothing
between us. It is impossible to do this and not dream of falling.
At the party, Alice drank herself past speaking except
to repeat how all the bad surprises made her sure
there could be good ones. I am trying to let the light in more.
A little later, some glamorous woman interrupted Alice peeing,
crouched in her canyon of car bumpers. Passed her a napkin
without slowing stride. It was so brief and so sweet, the way
my grandmother talked about signing dance cards. The way
you described a drug deal. I tried to remember everything
but all I kept were those four-inch heels, periscopes
disappearing upstream in the street.

ROBERT WOOD LYNN is a writer from Virginia. His debut collection of poems is Mothman Apologia (Yale University Press, 2022), selected by Rae Armantrout for the 2021 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. His new chapbook is How to Maintain Eye Contact (Button Poetry, 2023).