by Adina Kopinsky

The revolution will not
be televised—chronicled
instead in college notebooks,
composition, spiral, leather
bound. Give me your eager,
your broken words
yearning to scale free—breathe
an ellipsis, break a dash,
lie down in a grave
of your own first drafts,
climb on top of cars
to cry               for cease,
for fire, for the UN
to haul the click-clack of
red pens away, wash yourself
in a bath of ink, lay your body
on an A4 paper and spread
snow-angels,               peel words
out of your skin, slough yourself
into the irregular lines of your mind
music, drink    the wine
of your subconscious and sleep with
its multiverse, its nonsense, its huddled life:              listen
to Walt Whitman tell you all the world’s
a poetry slam; he’s chanting through
a megaphone on the rooftop,
an audience of letters is breaking the fourth wall,
streaming through the theater, thrown
at the actor’s feet howling
for a chance to shine, to skip, to halt,
to stream         like light until the end of the line.
Dream songs, inscape, break out
of Amherst in your white dress
sprout wings from your scapula
cry for revolution—
put down your spades, your keyboards,
your codes and locks, leave your cubicles,
your lawnmowers and yoga mats,
park your trucks
on the side of the road            because
the time has come—hand in hand—my friends,
the tyranny loosens and in each
child’s hand a notebook is open
to the first blank page
and the sky sings hope—
the epic of tomorrow is written,
word by word,
in your hand today.

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by Adina Kopinsky

A knee joint, a bent elbow,
a spangled skirt—ballerinas passé
towards the floor, shoulders gleam
with the minutiae of anatomy;
elegant as ever you sketched—

dancers in the dim light of a dressing room,
skin like cream and caramel, hollow
against spine, like horses paused
before the Kentucky Derby, prize stallions
of the Bolshoi Ballet.

No wonder you loved them all, Edgar—
muscles, feathered skirts and plumed
tails, the heave of chests, mist
and paw, the rise and fall of music,
gunshot, the hee-yaw! of a jockey—

you would have loved Messi too,
instep kick like a dancer on the soccer field,
rising a relevé to the rhythm of his fans;
hearts stopped, tableau, the body
of work you left behind, ballerina and horse,

brush and charcoal, form and flesh,
Raymondo, Ronaldo, the sweat and swell
of delusions, dreams, a revelation
of what our bodies, our hands
might have been—

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