What Follows Is a Reconstruction Based on the Best Available Evidence
1. I ate eggs from a chafing dish while the baker reminded us: the only thing that will hurt you out here are your own bad decisions
2. I felt fettered then un-
3. I listened to the rain
4. I listened to the rain hitting the Carrier compressor, the gravel walk
5. I listened to the rain flattening the clover, I listened to the rain letting up and then it was ozone and drip
6. On the bench under the overhang in the rain I let myself pretend I was younger and childless, like the first time I arrived here
7. The first time I arrived here, I never thought I am small and luminous
8. The body, burdened and miraculous
9. The body as thin-nest boundary
10. I climbed into your body like a cave
11. I was frightened to walk in the dark
12. Late at night even my own movements became unknowable, magnified and rustling
13. The night cut by the moon, punctured by the whistle of the cargo train
14. There was only a hole, there was only forward and more forward
15. The inevitability of a scarred life, your pulse, stitches, this palace of breath
16. go on, go on / again, again / return, return
Copyright © 2019 by Erika Meitner. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 18, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
“This poem—a meditation on memory, time, and the way people and place inscribe our bodies—takes its title from a section in the book Delirious New York by architect Rem Koolhaas where he attempts to recreate Dreamland, an amusement park in Coney Island that was opened in 1904 and burned to the ground in 1911. The poem begins with something my friend the writer-baker-musician Martin Philip told me when we were at MacDowell Colony one summer, to allay my fears about walking in the dark woods at night. The last line is a transcription of audio from James Coleman’s a/v piece ‘Box (ahhareturnabout), 1977,’ made up of images and commentary from the 1927 boxing match between Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey for the world heavyweight title, nicknamed ‘the long count fight.’”
—Erika Meitner
Erika Meitner
Erika Meitner is the author of five poetry collections: Holy Moly Carry Me (BOA Editions, 2018); Copia (BOA Editions, 2014); Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls (Anhinga Press, 2011); Ideal Cities (Anhinga Press, 2010), winner of the 2009 National Poetry Series; and Inventory at the All-Night Drugstore (Anhinga Press, 2003).