In honor of “National Poetry Month,” I am reprinting my poem, Upstate, which was published in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1988. I wrote this poem when I was 26 years old, living in Manhattan.
Upstate
In my apartment
in the city
where I sleep with cotton
stuffed in my ears and
a cat at the foot of the bed
room which is also the living room
kitchen and dining
room of which there is very little
and even less silence,
I sometimes think of my grandmother’s
stone cabin which sleeps twenty and
backyard which extends three miles
through the woods to the nearest neighbor
In a place
where black telephones are still dialed
and fax machines nonexistent
where absolutely positively nothing
needs overnight delivery
and dogs the size of ponies dash
barking at stars so loudly
I sleep with cotton stuffed in my ears.
