Spring 2011, Volume 10

Poetry by Leigh Vandebogart

"this is for you, and you, and you"

You can feel the ocean
in the air this morning,
waves in every stupid raindrop,
and the garbage men sound like seagulls
when they say hi.

Your voice is on my phone, so I listen
mostly out of curiosity,
not because I care
(don’t get the two confused).
It’s the start of a new week and I’m disappointed
again, already, thank you.

Everyone clicks away behind our eyeballs,
squinting to make sense;
no-one knows what we want.
But here—
listen, carefully, and watch the sidewalks.
Trip once and you’re done.
Bye-bye.

 

 

BIO: Leigh Vandebogart is a recent Brooklyn transplant, by way of Albany, NY. She is currently a special education teacher at a middle school in Queens, and just finished her first year teaching sixth grade. When she isn't in front of a class and wrangling twelve-year-olds, she pets and looks at her cats, writes poems, walks around Brooklyn, and drinks beverages of all sorts. She's had poems published in Chronogram Magazine; in Other: ______, an Albany poetry publication; and in a chapbook through FootHills Publishing entitled liquid starlight and nonsense (even though she prefers you ignore the chapbook’s existence entirely).