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NYC

New York poet Robin Myers captures the omnipresent mix of commerce with big-city surveillance.

NYC

By Robin Myers

The child goes willingly,

offering up her rosebud

backpack to the police.

Up there and outside

is the snow, the scraped

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sky, the barbershop

quartet, the fourteen-

dollar glass of wine,

livid pigeons, Rikers

Island, ice skaters

embracing, the rise

and fall of some but

not all things relevant

to our story. The girl’s

mother flickers behind

her. The policeman

grins like a fickle

father. Someone pings

a steel drum down

below all this. The

tunnel’s metal marrow

hums its hymn, blurts

pixels that bid us to

obey. If you see some-

thing, say something.

If you’re here, pay.

Robin Myers is a New York-born, Mexico City-based poet and translator. Her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in 32 Poems, the Massachusetts ReviewPANK MagazineSixth Finch, and Narrative Magazine, among other publications, and have been translated into Spanish, Galician, and Arabic.