Ariel Francisco

Living amidst the noise and clamor of an urban landscape, we can sometimes hear…..music!

Here’s a poem by Ariel Francisco (born 1991), author of A Sinking Ship Is Still a Ship (Burrow Press, 2020) and All My Heroes Are Broke (C&R Press, 2017).

A poet and translator born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents and raised in Miami, his work has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York City Ballet, The Academy of American Poets, and The American Poetry Review

Along the East River and in the Bronx Young Men Were Singing

I heard them and I still hear them
above the threatening shrieks of police sirens
above the honking horns of morning traffic,
above the home-crowd cheers of Yankee Stadium
above the school bells and laughter
lighting up the afternoon
above the clamoring trudge of the 1 train
and the 2 and 4, 5, 6, the B and the D
above the ice-cream trucks’ warm jingle
above the stampede of children
playing in the street,
above the rush of a popped fire hydrant
above the racket of eviction notices
above the whisper of moss and mold moving in
above the High Bridge and the 145th Street Bridge
above mothers calling those children
to come in for dinner, to come in
before it gets dark, to get your ass inside
above them calling a child who may never come home
above the creaking plunge of nightfall
and darkness settling in the deepest corners
above the Goodyear blimp circling the Stadium
above the seagulls circling the coastal trash
along the East River and in the Bronx
young men are singing and I hear them,
eastbound into eternity even
as morning destars the sky.

--Ariel Francisco [Published in the March 11, 2019 edition of The New Yorker.