On the train home from The demo, a lone drummer In red keffiyeh; That peculiar sense Of being set apart from Those you’d been one of Just the day before. Next time: don’t walk uptown through Soho to the march— The shoppers! As if On a separate planet, When you expected Crowds walking with you, Waiting on line For a sample sale— It’s not until blocks And blocks later when The drums, the roar—then. And now she’s alone Too, a single stick’s beat as The rain continues.
Jessica Greenbaum’s (she/her) most recent collection, Spilled and Gone, was chosen by the Boston Globe as a Best Book, and her previous one, The Two Yvonnes was named a Best Book by Library Journal. Poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Paris Review, Yale Review, The New York Review of Books, Poetry London, Best American Poetry, 2024 and Pushcart Prize, 2024. She is the co-editor of Treelines: 21st Century American Poems, and Mishkan HaSeder, the first ever poetry Haggadah. A recipient of awards from the NEA and the Poetry Society of America, she teaches inside and outside academia and, as a social worker, with communities who have experienced trauma. https://poemsincommunity.org/
