Bicycle in a Ransacked City

An Elegy

Andrés Cerpa

• Publisher: Alice James Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781948579537
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

These quiet, descriptive poems blaze with an inferno of lamenting and loving muses as a son helplessly watches his father suffer from a debilitating illness. The inquisitive voice of the speaker gently paints an emotional landscape ranging from childhood to the present, while trying to find glimpses of happiness in the imminent sorrow.

Acknowledgments

Mom, your love & generosity live in me each day. Thank you. You are our rock & our joy.

All the light in this book results from the light you & Dad created together.

I will love you always.

Ileana, my sister, we were there together. You give me life & hope in the face of despair.

Thank you for your love & all of the laughter.

Jeanne Murray Walker, my first poetry teacher, you saw me. I am eternally grateful for your guidance & trust.

Colin Schmidt, without your brilliance I’d be lost. You are my brother in poetry & this one life.

Michael Curley Jr., thank you for the hours & the music. It was beautiful.

Much love to everyone on Center St.—especially, Daniel Levine, Ryan “Telly” Shea, Ian Platz,

Ryan Conaty, Ben Morrison, Matthew Paparone & Billy Bartz.

Many thanks to my teachers, the homies & the great fires.

The generous support of the MacDowell Colony & the Rutgers University-Newark MFA program nourished me during the creation of this book.

My warm thanks to the editors & staffs of the following publications in which these poems first appeared (sometimes in earlier versions) for their generous support of this work.

“Freud Cycle — Untitled (Freud’s Desk & Chair, Study Room, 1938)”—Hayden’s Ferry Review

“Fear of Intimacy” — Bellevue Literary Review

“Seasonal without Spring: Autumn” — The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day

“Seasonal without Spring: Winter” & “Portrait & Shadow” — Kenyon Review

“Buried in Darkness, Light”— West Branch

“Notebook” portions of this manuscript were published by Devil’s Lake, West Branch, & Horsethief

“For Tim — Newark, DE” — RHINO

“At the Tree Line” — RHINO— selected as the 2017 Editor’s Choice Award

“Bronx Nekyia” — Perigee

“At the Castle of San Ferran” — Radar Poetry

“Orpheus in the Lost Ampitheater” — Triquarterly

“Seasonal without Spring: Summer” — Gulf Coast

“Without Sleep” — Third Coast

“At the Water” — Glass: A Journal of Poetry

“Despair & Fire” & “Without Sleep” were featured on Episode 3 of POETA — 8 Ball TV, directed by Andrew Basilia.

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Alice James Books has been publishing poetry since 1973. The press was founded in Boston, Massachusetts as a cooperative wherein authors performed the day-to-day undertakings of the press. This collaborative element remains viable even today, as authors who publish with the press are also invited to become members of the editorial board and participate in editorial decisions at the press. The editorial board selects manuscripts for publication via the press’s annual, national competition, the Alice James Award. AJB remains committed to its founders’ original mission to support women poets, while expanding upon the scope to include poets of all genders, backgrounds, and stages of their careers. In keeping with our efforts to foster equity and inclusivity in publishing and the literary arts, AJB seeks out poets whose writing possesses the range, depth, and ability to cultivate empathy in our world and to dynamically push against silence. The press was named for Alice James, sister to William and Henry, whose extraordinary gift for writing went unrecognized during her lifetime.

DESIGNED BY

PAMELA A. CONSOLAZIO

Printed by McNaughton & Gunn

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Note to the Reader
• Contents
• Letter
• Portrait & Shadow
• Freud Cycle—Untitled (Freud’s Desk & Chair, Study Room 1938)
• Tracing a Sparrow
• With a Fistful of Earth
• Seasonal without Spring: Autumn
• Fear of Intimacy
• Pilgrimage
• Despair & Fire
• Seasonal without Spring: Winter
• Without Sleep
• Lauren—Vondelpark, Amsterdam
• The Distance between Love & My Language
• At the Water
• Three Sheets to the Wind
• Rome
• The Theory of the Flat World
• Morning Journal
• At the Castle of San Ferran
• The Lesson
• Bronx Nekyia
• Drift
• For Tim—Newark, DE
• Seasonal without Spring: Summer
• So Close to an Ending
• Buried in Darkness, Light
• At the Tree Line
• Orpheus in the Lost Amphitheater
• Acknowledgments