#heathermchugh

[mtaartsdesign]

#PoetryInMotion is back! Be on the lookout for two new poems - coming very soon to trains and digital screens throughout the #MTA system. Presented here first, poem by Heather McHugh with artwork from Sally Anne Gil’s "Edges of a South Brooklyn Sky" (2018) at Avenue U ( N ) station in Brooklyn.

[themapleleaves]

"Intensive Care" [excerpt] by Heather McHugh

As if intensity were a virtue we say good and. Good and drunk. Good and dead. What plural means is everything that multiplying greatens, as if two were more like ninetynine than one, or one were more like zero than like anything. As if you loved me, you will leave me.

***

As if friends were to be saved we are friends. We talk to ourselves, go home at the same time. As if beds were to be made not born in, as if love were just heredity we know the worst, we fear the known. Today we were bad and together; tonight we’ll be good and alone.