• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Painted Bride Quarterly

  • About
    • About PBQ
    • People
  • Issues
    • Current Issue
    • Past Issues
    • Print Annuals
  • Podcast
    • Latest Podcast
    • All Podcasts
  • News & Events
  • Submit
  • Shop
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Prose
  • Contributors
  • Current Issue

Aaron Balkan: For the Monumental Stockbroker    in Liberty Park, Manhattan

May 16, 2011 by PBQ

A man opens his briefcase to double check,
and a wind lifts the papers out of his lap,
tossing them over his head like hovering sea birds.

It whips a newspaper at him,
then flyers torn from lampposts, plastic bags,
a tablecloth from an outdoor café—

more paper covers his feet and the bench
and ground, filling the trees with white,
a cheap paperback; an advertisement

for Lily & the Rose floats in the fountain
—and delinquent phone bills, an infant’s
birthday card, a handwritten letter in Portuguese,

a photo of his twin, taken by Magnum—
he’s in a tuxedo, his arm around someone
cropped from the picture—and he’s not

young or old but it’s already years ago,
nor is he smiling but has a tiny
look of pleasure on his face—a wholly

uneventful thing—like the everyday
dull music of one’s own repeated name.

Filed Under: Contributors 68, Issue 68, Poetry, Poetry 68 Tagged With: Aaron Balkan, Contributors 68, Poetry, Poetry 68

Primary Sidebar

Recent News & Events

PBQ @ AWP!

PBQ Poet’s Publishing Premier: Carlos Andrés Gómez’s Fractures

Issue 100 Has Arrived!

Temporarily Closing Submissions

PBQ presents: Slam Bam Reboot

© 2020 Painted Bride Quarterly. Contact PBQ: info@pbqmag.org