E-Verse congratulates Ryan Eckes on being selected as a 2016 Pew Center for the Arts Fellow

for “narrative-driven, closely observed poetry [that] is uniquely attuned to the voices and histories of urban life.” Here’s an example of one of his nimble poems, which delicately traces the paths of thought and memory in a meditative moment after sipping a dirty martini. For more, visit the author’s website.

it’s like drinking the ocean
w/out choking
if life ended now
it’s just time
ask me how
the whole city’s doing
edgar allan poe is fine
in moyamensing prison
they love him
in the deli corner
of acme, muttering
provolone til the parking
lot is buried in snow
you can dig your car out
next week
here’s a pack of tokens
and some scratch-offs
if you were born after
this day in 1912
you can bring the lovers
back together
one’s walking into ray’s
one’s walking home right
now, probably a different
lorraine than the one
you know but all motion
is a crab, snockey’s closed
and stays open
in my heart
which is late
to the tongue—take
my tongue and paint
their doors before
they’re home, paint
their steps like
the bruises
you return to
as if employed
by orange peels
to the curb
you owe nothing
to the taste of
the weight
of desire, the city flattened
by rent as the rent dies
for our sins and the roads
bleed out