"BIG CITY CANTE INTERMEDIO"

Deeply grateful to Tea & Tattered Pages and its curator Amanda Ngoho Reavey for presenting my poem and urban meditation on several cities, "Big City Cante Intermedio," as a Panthalassa Pamphlet.  You can see the ten-page pamphlet poem HERE. Cities covered are New York City, Provence, Ukiah, Baguio City, Barcelona, Vienna and Paris. Here's an excerpt:

I digressed to show how in New York

City (pop.: 8.4 million, est. 2013)

one can be anyone one wants to be

or try,

as in to discover if a fit improbably

exists so that, once, I was a flamenco dancer

in this big city where many effects are

possible

especially with money, e.g.

dance fees which made a dancer

and guitarist hood their eyes at my

version of braceo: the bastardization

of flowers, the opposite of grace—

(how many ways may an artist suffer?)

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Deep thanks as well to John Bloomberg-Rissman for his deep friendship, which is why I dedicated this poem to him. (His editing suggestions were also very helpful!)

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"Big City Cante Intermedio" is one of the poems in a developing manuscript entitled URBAN.

Thank you, Universe.