A Poem By Alissa Quart

by Mark Bibbins, Editor

Instrumental

There, reading against the traffic, a car
crash between chapters.

Alphabet via street
signs. C is for Con
Ed.

Kids music
meant an actual kid, singing to herself

past
all the silent billboards.

*

Then those days — when you were starting out,
as they say — you were sulfur

frozen at Odeon

when strapped to the masthead,
every remark,
aside, sharpened.

The table by the mirror reserved
for all the baby lionesses.

And now. You are living the app.
A pop-up. La Vida App!

Too many words, not enough ears.

*

An instrument of life, of instrumental life,
In those days — raised by the book, zine,
velveteen couch. African

violet. Your face in the spider
plants. World of Our Fathers,
Serpico edition.

Hairy men bearing
Bronx-Yonkers vowels.

Famous daughters’ names hidden,
like classical music in restaurants.

Children under oak tables.
Everyone under nine is “Outta sight!”

*

All stars, all
likes. All nothing.

And you know, it’s so much like every culture

business in which you are really nothing,
with some handler/mother/father guiding you along

toward ?option percent foreign.
You are something waiting to be nothing or vice

versa. As value
is circulation.
The Twitter
Dead Souls told me.

*

Ann says: In Minnesota it was
peer therapy on the phone, over coffee,
or on plush ottomans.

You’d talk for an hour then
the peer for her hour.

Unlike a real friendship, so to speak,
each person had to listen

their allotted time.

*

Now, the ads talk to us all
in cars. Bus stops move with

product. Streaming, advertorial, posted, scraped
mined. Reading is fracking.

Friends are what we handle.
BabywithiPad!.jpg

Too many words,
not enough ears.

Alissa Quart is author of the non-fiction Republic of Outsiders, out this month, and contributes regularly to many publications including The New York Times. Her poetry has appeared in the London Review of Books and elsewhere.

You will find more poems here. You may contact the editor at poems@theawl.com.