notgonewest

nyc. forever

[notgonewest]

“CAST IT” A.W. West (2024)

Performed live in the East Village with Harpist

[notgonewest]

“Under Penn Station” by A.W. West (2024)

[milkandvoid]

[notgonewest]

lines 41-68, “High Tide on Chelsea Pier” (last stanza) by A.W. West. part of a collection performed over the span of four days in New York City during the LA riots

[notgonewest]

“Hope” A.W West, (2025)

There is something haunting my own body.

This is an infallible, irrefutable truth.

There is something in there.

Something in between bone and flesh and organ and meat.

I close my eyes and call it hope

I bite my lip and call it hope

I grit my teeth and call it hope

The blood rushes against my ears like water

Like ocean

A second half of an unforgiving figure

A baby not-drowned

In the Nile river.

And I don’t know where my skin ends

And the world begins

My clouded brain

The non-promise clenched in my fist

Like fingernails on palm

Like blood spilled

Like firstborn

Like locusts

Like plague

Like frogs.

What can I say?

I aim

I intend to be looking

A cut that scabs and heals itself

A blister that bubbles

An ecosystem that heals itself over

Whether you like it or not

This whole time

It was yourself

Stitching yourself together

Like when your mother

And her mother

And her mother

Learned you how to sew

So I close my eyes andhope

Andhope

Andhope Andhope

Andhope.