If I could build another bridge made of one long line of poetry, it would be pedestrian too. It would begin not in the middle of a lost memory. No, it would pick up after “it got very cool.” It would move to a different rhythm—not vehicles rushing by beneath. Waves of a solitary sea before it meets its mouth opening wide instead. It would slow us down. Absolutely not a confluence. A mixing zone where the mixing is so much like a—there is no beach. No old. No new. There is this launch. A laugh in the steely air. And it is still so very cool.

Note: This poem is a response to John Ashbery’s untitled poem that runs the length of the Irene Hixon Whitney Pedestrian Bridge (designed by Siah Armajani) in both directions.