Times Square at night, Jorge Royan, 2012
Schism
Today in the taxi a passenger got in and she was crying. I don’t know why. We left Astoria for Williamsburg. I gave her a little package of tissues and she went on her way.
Kafka said crying is especially alarming for me. I cannot cry. When other people cry, it seems to me like a strange, incomprehensible natural phenomenon.
I thought maybe she was going through a breakup, or perhaps it was a passage in a novel.
Some people think of Williamsburg as the “hipster apocalypse” and others, the Orthodox, know the Lord is there with them. She’s pushing a shopping cart full of plastic bottles rescued from trash cans.
Crying literally means “to ask for loudly.” She mumbles through a drop of saltwater, but She’s really saying: You are worthy of asking and having your question heard.
Sean Singer was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, in 1974. A former New York City taxi driver, he has an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Rutgers University-Newark, and has been awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Singer is the author of two prior collections of poetry: Honey & Smoke and Discography, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. He offers editorial services at seansingerpoetry.com.
