Tonight

Tonight
by Rowan Ricardo Phillips

Post date: 10.01.06
Issue date: 10.09.06

In the beginning there was this surface. A wall, beginning.
Tonight it coaxed music from a Harlem cloudbank. It freestyled
a smoke from a stranger's coat; stole thinned gin.
It was on the surfaces of its beginnings, but outside
looking in. The lapse-blue facade of Harlem Hospital is weatherstill
like a starlit lake in the middle of Lenox Avenue.
I touched the tattoed surfaces of my birthplace tonight--
and because tonight is curing, the beginning let me through;
and everywhere was blurring halogen. Love the place that welcomed you.


National Review Online