<< Issue 33
Vincent Katz
Dark Star
A wetness on the ground
Puddles, and I can’t reach you
Except through this music
Which pulses so long ago
Is revived in synapses anyone
There or not can transfer
Across fretboard and key
Sound understated implode
Disjunct of schedules
To crawl out of pit
A delicate glance downtown
River nearby an assurance
Light, moments that add up
I assure you intense joy
Riding down the avenue
That building stands low
As present reminder
Gift in an afternoon I take
The time to write this others
Speak or work around depth
To bottom park in other tongue
Light leaking down fresh
Again at the park where
That meeting took place
Others still walking a season
Passed expression in gait
And resistance to accepting
Vault innocuous determinant
Vincent Katz is a poet and translator. He is the author of the poetry collections Broadway for Paul (Alfred A. Knopf), Southness (Lunar Chandelier Press) and Swimming Home (Nightboat Books), as well as The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius (Princeton). He has curated exhibitions on Black Mountain College and Rudy Burckhardt and recently co-curated a retrospective of the films of Isabelle Huppert at Film Forum in New York. In 2021, he collaborated with composer Sarah Sarhandi on an opera, While There’s Light, based on his translations of Propertius, that appeared at the Tête à Tête Opera Festival in London. Katz’s writing on contemporary art and poetry has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail and The Poetry Project Newsletter. He lives in New York City.