My name is Erika Meitner, and I'm gonna read a poem called "At Thirty" by the poet Lynda Hull. This is a sort of quintessential New York poem to me. And it's one that both makes me homesick, because I grew up in New York, and also makes me feel like I'm back in the city again, even though I haven't been able to go home since the pandemic started.
Whole years I knew only nights: automats
& damp streets, the Lower East Side steep
with narrow rooms where sleepers turn beneath
alien skies. I ran when doorways spoke
rife with smoke & zippers. But it was only the heart’s
racketing flywheel stuttering I want, I want
until exhaustion, until I was a guest in the yoke
of my body by the last margin of land where the river
mingles with the sea & far off daylight whitens,
a rending & yielding I must kneel before, as
barges loose glittering mineral freight
& behind me façades gleam with pigeons
folding iridescent wings. Their voices echo
in my voice naming what is lost, what remains.