Spencer Reece's first published book of poetry, The Clerk's Tale, was selected from the slush pile by Louise Glück as the winner of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bakeless Prize and published by Houghton Mifflin in 2004. The titular poem was adapted into a short film by James Franco in 2010. Reece is also the author of the poetry collection The Road to Emmaus, published by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux in 2014, a finalist for the Griffin Prize and longlisted for the National Book Award. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. For several years he lived in Madrid, where he was the national secretary to the Episcopal bishop of Spain. He lives in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Spencer Reece - Ephphetha

Bino A. Realuyo (“The Visitor: A Warning,” Forest Hills R -71 Av) is the author of The Gods We Worship Live Next Door, which won a 2005 Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry. Poems from his completed manuscript #TheRebelSonnets can be found in recent and current issues of  The Harvard Review, The Georgia Review, The Common, Salamander, North American Review, New American Writing, Missouri Review, Another Chicago Magazine, and ZYZZYVA. In December 2019, the band U2 featured his poem in its Joshua Tree Anniversary Concert Tour in Manila. A graduate of Harvard University, he lives in Jackson Heights, Queens and works as an adult educator and immigrant rights activist. He is the co-founder of The Asian American Writers Workshop, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2021. Read more at binoarealuyo.com.

Bino A. Realuyo - The Visitor

Jasmine Nikki “Nikay” C. Paredes (“Feast,” Queens Plaza - E) is the author of the chapbook collections We Will See the Scatter (dancing girl press, 2014), which received the Maningning Miclat Poetry Award, and Reclamations (Vagabond Press, 2017). Born and raised in Cebu City, she immigrated to the United States in 2016 and lives in Woodside, Queens. She is the Senior Programs Manager at the Academy of American Poets and is the co-founder of TLDTD (tldtd.org), a biannual journal for Filipino poets and poetry.

Jasmine Nikki “Nikay” C. Paredes - Feast

Yasmin Adele Majeed(“For Rob, April 15, 2020,” Rockaway Beach 36th - A) is a Filipino and Pakistani American writer living in New York. She is an incoming MFA candidate in fiction at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has received fellowships from Kundiman, Kweli, and the Periplus Collective. She is an editor for The Margins, the literary magazine of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. (IG: @yasminadelemajeed, Twitter: @yasminamajeed)

Yasmin Adele Majeed - For Rob, April 15, 2020

Jimena Lucero (“Then, Here, & Will Be”) is a poet, actor, & a sister. She was a 2019-2020 Emerge-Surface-Be fellow at the Poetry Project. Her writing appears in The Recluse, Nightboat’s Echo, EOAGH, Colorbloq.org, and more. She recently made a short film titled Silver Femme. It screened at the Ann Arbor Film festival. Jimena’s work is rooted in trans liberation, disability justice, and future building.

Jimena Lucero - Then, Here, & Will Be

They jumped from the burning floors—
one, two, a few more,
higher, lower.

The photograph halted them in life,
and now keeps them   
above the earth toward the earth.

Each is still complete,
with a particular face
and blood well hidden.

There’s enough time
for hair to come loose,
for keys and coins
to fall from pockets.

They’re still within the air’s reach,
within the compass of places
that have just now opened.

I can do only two things for them—
describe this flight
and not add a last line.

Wisława Szymborska, “Photograph from September 11” from Monologue of a Dog. Copyright © 2005 by Wisława Szymborska. Reprinted with permission of Harcourt, Inc.
Source: Monologue of a Dog (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005)

Photograph from September 11 by Wisława Szymborska

On Becoming a Mermaid by Lorna Goodison

allia abdullah-matta (“mott ave,” Mott Avenue/Far Rockaway - A) is a poet and Professor of English at CUNY LaGuardia. She writes about the culture, and history of Black women and explores the presence of Black bodies and voices in fine art and poetry. Her poetry has been published in Newtown Literary, Promethean, Marsh Hawk Review, Mom Egg Review, Vox, Global City Review, and the Jam Journal Issue of Push/Pull. Her do-si-do double chapbook, washed clean & blues politico was published by harlequin creatures (hcx) 2021. She is working on a poetry/hybrid collection of poems and images entitled blackprint.

#QUEENSBOUND #QUEENSBOUND24 #QB24

allia abdullah-matta - “mott ave,” Mott Avenue/Far Rockaway - A | QUEENSBOUND 2024

Jared Beloff (“The World to Come,” Kew Gardens Union Turnpike - E) is the author of Who Will Cradle Your Head (ELJ Editions, 2023). He is the editor of the Marvel-inspired poetry anthology, Marvelous Verses (Daily Drunk, 2021) and has been a peer reviewer for Whale Road Review since 2021. His work can be found at Night Heron Barks, Baltimore Review, River Mouth Review, The Shore, Contrary Magazine and elsewhere. You can find him on Twitter @Read_Instead and his website www.jaredbeloff.com.

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Jared Beloff - “The World to Come,” Kew Gardens Union Turnpike - E | QUEENSBOUND 2024

Joe Gross (“Beatitude,” Flushing-Main Street - 7) is a bookseller, poet, translator, and author of the prize-winning chapbook Lest We All Get Clipped (Ghostbird Press, 2023). His work has been anthologized in Eating Alone: Essays & Reflections (Clotheslines Press, 2023) and the pearl (Wyeth Renwick, 2023) and has appeared in KtB Magazine, Twin Pies Literary, VIA, the tide rises, the tide falls, HORNS, petrichor, Four Way Review, Fugitives & Futurists, and la piccioletta barca. He holds an MFA from Queens College, CUNY, where he was co-editor of Armstrong Literary. Find him on Twitter @komradekapybara and @joegrosspoet on Instagram.

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Originals

Joe Gross - “Beatitude,” Flushing-Main Street - 7 | QUEENSBOUND 2024

Emily Hockaday (“The Empty Train,” Richmond Hill 104th St – J) is a poet living in Queens with her family and their muppety dog. She writes about ecology, parenting, grief, and chronic illness. Her second collection, In a Body, is forthcoming from Harbor Editions October 2023, and her first, Naming the Ghost, debuted with Cornerstone Press in September 2022. She is the author of six chapbooks and has had poems in anthologies and print and online journals. You can find her on the web at www.emilyhockaday.com or @E_Hockaday.

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Emily Hockaday - “The Empty Train,” Richmond Hill 104th St – J | QUEENSBOUND 2024

Catherine Kapphahn (“The Boy Who Flew” Queensboro Plaza – N) is a writer, educator, storyteller and speaker. Her memoir Immigrant Daughter: Stories You Never Told Me received The Center for Fiction’s Christopher Doheny Award, and Catherine recorded it for Audible. Catherine received grants from the Queens Council on the Arts and City Artist Corps. Her writing has appeared in Motherwell Magazine, Croatia Week, Newtown Literary, the Feminist Press Anthology This is the Way We Say Goodbye, Astoria Life, and CURE Magazine. Catherine is an adjunct lecturer at City University of New York at Lehman College in the Bronx, where her students’ brave stories inspire her. Catherine also is a yoga teacher. She grew up near the mountains in Colorado and now lives between two bridges in Queens with her husband and two sons.

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Catherine Kapphahn - “The Boy Who Flew” Queensboro Plaza – N | QUEENSBOUND 2024

Hiromi Kiba (“Queens Bohemian Rhapsody" and "クイーンズ・ボヘミアン・ラプソディ" - Read by the author in English and Japanese -121 St - J) (they/them) is a Queens-based interdisciplinary artist from Japan. In their latest project, the poetry video “Mirror Ball” (2023), Kiba collaborated with the experimental multimedia artist Phill Niblock. Kiba has participated in artist residencies at Chashama (2022), the NARS Foundation (2021), and mh PROJECT NYC (2020). They have performed at venues, including The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (2022), and contributed to a poetry chapbook Dance Floor Realization for Harlequin Creature (2021), along with columns titled “Music and Spirituality” for Love Injection (2019-2022). Kiba is a music enthusiast, a passionate dancer, and a dedicated record collector. Operating as DJ Kibachan, they craft uniquely eclectic 4-hour vinyl sets during their monthly residency at Jupiter Disco in Bushwick. For more information, visit their website at https://kibounce.wixsite.com/website follow them on IG, FB, and Twitter @kibounce and listen to DJ sets on Mixcloud at https://www.mixcloud.com/kibounce. 

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Hiromi Kiba - “Queens Bohemian Rhapsody" and "クイーンズ・ボヘミアン・ラプソディ" - 121 St - J | QUEENSBOUND 2024

Amy Lemmon (“Evening Call,” 36th Avenue - N) is the author of five poetry collections, including Saint Nobody (Red Hen Press) and The Miracles (C&R Press). Her poems and essays have appeared in The Best American Poetry, Rolling Stone, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Verse, Court Green, The Journal, Marginalia, and many other magazines and anthologies. Amy is Professor of English at the Fashion Institute of Technology-SUNY, where she teaches writing, literature, and creativity. She is the proud solo parent of two young adults, one of whom is intellectually disabled and in residential care. Born and raised in Ohio, she has lived in Astoria, Queens, since 1996.

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Amy Lemmon - “Evening Call,” 36th Avenue - N | QUEENSBOUND 2024

Rajan Maharjan (“March Conversations with Arlani” and "अर्लानीसित मार्च कुराकानी" - Read by the author in ENGLISH and NEPALI - 88 St -A), a first-generation immigrant from Nepal, who has been living in Queens since 2014. He writes poetry in English, Nepali and Nepal Bhasa, his mother language, also exploring other genres through which he could tell untold stories of his people. His poetry and other works are published in few Nepali and English journals including Newtown Literary and Pratik Magazine. Find him on Twitter at @rjnmhrjn. 

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Rajan Maharjan - “March Conversations with Arlani” and "अर्लानीसित मार्च कुराकानी" - 88 St - A

José Alfredo Menjivar (“I Gotta Get Back Home" and "Tengo Que Volver A Casa” Read by the author in ENGLISH and SPANISH - Northern Blvd - M/R)  is a writer, teacher educator, and educational researcher. He writes about being Honduran-New Yorker, growing up in Queens, being bilingual and queer, about cooking and food memories, teachers of Color and public education. All of these interests and aspects of his identity make sense if you know him personally and/or know his life story. You can follow him on Instagram at @josealfredophd @josealfredowrites @aqueenscommunityteacher.

José Alfredo Menjivar (“I Gotta Get Back Home" and "Tengo Que Volver A Casa” Read by the author in ENGLISH and SPANISH  Northern Blvd - M/R) es escritor, educador de maestras, y investigador educativo. Escribe sobre ser Hondureño-Neoyorquino, creciendo en Queens, ser bilingüe y queer, sobre la cocina y los recuerdos de la comida, los maestros de color y la educación pública. Todos estos intereses y aspectos de su identidad tienen sentido si lo conoces personalmente y/o conoces la historia de su vida. Puedes seguirlo en Instagram en @josealfredophd @josealfredowrites @aqueenscommunityteacher. 

#QUEENSBOUND #QUEENSBOUND24 #QB24

José Alfredo Menjivar - “I Gotta Get Back Home" and "Tengo Que Volver A Casa” - Northern Blvd - M/R

Enzo Silon Surin (“Elegy for One Sixty-First Street” - Parsons Blvd - F) is a Haitian-born and Queens-amplified award-winning poet, author, educator, publisher and social advocate. He has taught, performed, and lectured on topics such as social justice, the immigrant experience, racial disparities, and mental health awareness. He is author of American Scapegoat (Black Lawrence Press, 2023) and When My Body Was A Clinched Fist (2020), winner of the 21st Annual Massachusetts Book Awards. In American Scapegoat, his second full-length collection of poetry, he interrogates the socio-political framework of a democracy at war with itself and its humanity. Surin is also a teaching artist co-editor of Where We Stand: Poems of Black Resilience (Cherry Castle Publishing, 2022). He is Founding Editor & Publisher at Central Square Press and Founder & Executive Director at the Faraday Publishing Company, Inc., a nonprofit literary services and social advocacy organization. www.enzosurinink.org

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ShurePlus MOTIV

Enzo Silon Surin - " Elegy for One Sixty-First Street" - Parsons Blvd - F  | QUEENSBOUND 2024

Bruce E. Whitacre (“A Garuda in Forest Park, A Pantoum" - Kew Gardens - F) wrote The Elk in the Glade: The World of Pioneer and Painter Jennie Hicks is a 2022 Publishers Weekly Editors Pick and won 2nd Place at TheBookFest 23. His second collection, Good Housekeeping, is forthcoming in 2024. Publications: The American Journal of Poetry, World Literature Today and more.  Anthologies: Poets of Queens (coming in 2024), I Wanna be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe (Eric Hoffer Honorable Mention), The Wonders of Winter, and The Strategic Poet craft book. A retired theatre executive, he lives in Forest Hills with his husband. More at www.brucewhitacre.com.

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Bruce E. Whitacre - “A Garuda in Forest Park, A Pantoum" - Kew Gardens - F | QUEENSBOUND 2024

Micah Zevin ("36th Avenue Poem" - 36th Avenue - W) is a librarian poet living in Jackson Heights. He has published articles and poems at The Otter, the Newtown Literary Journal and Blog, Poetry and Politics, Reality Beach, Jokes Review, Post (Blank), the American Journal of Poetry, The Tower Journal, Five2OneMagazine, the What Rough Beast Series at Indolent Books, Heavy Feather Review, Big Other, The Bowery Gothic, Brooklyn Vol. 1., The Poets of Queens Anthology, Narrative Northeast, Pine Hills Review,  Spoke Journal, Fence and forthcoming in First Literary Review East. His first book of poems, Metal, Heavy was published as of December 2020 from Olena Jennings and Poets of Queens Press. He created and curates an open mic poetry prompt workshop called The Risk of Discovery Reading Series. His website is www.micahzevin.weebly.com and his reading series page is on Facebook, ROD-RiskofDiscoveryReadingSeries.

#QUEENSBOUND #QUEENSBOUND24 #QB24

Micah Zevin - "36th Avenue Poem" - 36th Avenue - W | QUEENSBOUND 2024

Welcome to QUEENSBOUND 2024! Since 2018, QUEENSBOUND has showcased the communities of Queens through the words of poets writing poems by, for, and about the borough, all presented on a Queens-line-only subway map. 

Hear all of the 2024 contributors: allia abdullah-matta, Jared Beloff, Joe Gross, Nathalie Handal, Emily Hockaday, Dena Igusti, Olena Jennings, Catherine Kapphahn, Hiromi Kiba, Amy Lemmon, Rajan Maharjan, José Alfredo Menjivar, Enzo Silon Surin, Bruce Whitacre, and Micah Zevin.  

This year’s edition introduces poems presented in four languages other than English—Japanese, Nepali, Spanish, and Ukrainian—accompanied by their English translations. 

Individual poems are shared in the playlist below.

QUEENSBOUND 2024 - Monorail

Harel - All Possible Fates

The poem “Agency,” appears in the excellent, just-released anthology Braving the Body (Small Harbor Publishing, 2024), edited by Nicole Callihan, Pichchenda Bao, and Jennifer Franklin. Get yourself a copy.

Agency by KC Trommer

FEAR NOT, MARY

We were talking about the Annunciation
in her office—the moment when Mary looks up 

from her reading to find Gabriel and the whole story 
alive in front of her—when we heard them down the street,

bleating through megaphones about the Shirtwaist girls trapped 
in the Asch Building who called out, who jumped, 

who burned. This was after eight died in Midwood, 
days before the office filled with the smoke 

from 2nd and 7th, just after we heard about the black box, 
and the deliberate sounds of the co-pilot clicking 150 people down 

to death, the morning after I woke at 5, to the smell of gas 
in the kitchen, snapped the knob to OFF, turned on 

the fan and opened wide all the windows. I found him still, 
asleep, his small breath going along as if there were 

no emergency, as if he could keep going, as if fires never 
ate whole buildings, as if danger were not always 

pushing up against you, as if you could not be trapped, like those girls 
on Washington and Greene, like those children in Midwood, 

like the newlyweds on Germanwings Flight 9525, 
like Mary in the story, as if we are not always at the mercy
 
of something, his breaths keep going, 
the breathing soft, steady, and on.


Fugue Journal, Issue 49, http://www.fuguejournal.com; Selected by Kevin Prufer as the winner of the 2015 Fugue Poetry Prize
Pictured: Fra Angelico's The Virgin of the Annunciation

Fear Not, Mary by KC Trommer

Included here: "First Map," "We Call Them Beautiful," "The Cyclone," "Scylla, Dragging at the Hounds," "7 to 46th Street/Bliss," "Fear Not, Mary," "Everything Falls Through Me," and "Gauntlet."

We Call Them Beautiful

Selections from We Call Them Beautiful by KC Trommer

Belal Mobarak (“Where the N Train Stops”) was born in Alexandria, Egypt. Raised in Queens. He is a poet, artist, and the son of a great storyteller. Writing is how he learned to finish his stories and poetry is how he learned to tell them with the least amount of words possible. Belal recently traveled across the North Coast sharing his stories for The Moth Mainstage. A finalist in Brutal Nation’s 2017 Competition for Writers of Color. You can find his work published in Columbia Poetry Review, Newtown Literary, Blueshift Journal, Flock, Apogee, HEart, and others. Currently working towards his MFA in Creative Writing at Queens College and is an Academic Advisor for LaGuardia Community College. You may find more of his work at Belalmobarak.com/poetry.

Where the N Train Stops by Belal Mobarak

Joseph O. Legaspi (“[ their spine ]”) is the author of the poetry collections Threshold and Imago, both from CavanKerry Press; and three chapbooks: Postcards (Ghost Bird Press), Aviary, Bestiary (Organic Weapon Arts), and Subways (Thrush Press). His works have appeared in POETRY, New England Review, World Literature Today, Best of the Net, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day. He co-founded Kundiman (www.kundiman.org), a national nonprofit organization dedicated to nurturing generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature. “[ their spine ]” is from the chapbook, “Subways” (Thrush Press).

[ their spine ] by Joseph O. Legaspi

Malcolm Chang (“Kalpana Chawla Way”) has been a lawyer, editor and food entrepreneur. His writing has appeared in the Newtown Literary Journal and Elle Magazine (S.A.). He has performed his work at First Tuesdays, Line Break and Queen Writers Resist. His debut story “The Cruelty of Children” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is an Artist Peer Circle moderator for the Queens Council On the Arts and the current president of the board of directors of the Newtown Literary Alliance. His current project is the novel Dimitri and the Worm, the story of the assassination of South African prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd in 1966.

Kalpana Chawla Way by Malcolm Chang

M.A. Dennis’ “A Tribe Called Queens” - QUEENSBOUND 2020

Nana Brew-Hammond’s “Packed” - QUEENSBOUND 2020

Pichchenda Bao’s “In Long Island City” - QUEENSBOUND 2020

I Go Back to May 1937 by Sharon Olds

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the   
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,   
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are   
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.   
I want to go up to them and say Stop,   
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,   
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,   
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty face turning to me,   
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,   
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,   
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I   
take them up like the male and female   
paper dolls and bang them together   
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to   
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

--Sharon Olds, “I Go Back to May 1937” from Strike Sparks: Selected Poems 1980-2002. Copyright © 2004 by Sharon Olds. Reprinted with the permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Source: Strike Sparks: Selected Poems 1980-2002 (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004)



I Go Back to May 1937 by Sharon Olds

Storm Warnings by Adrienne Rich

The glass has been falling all the afternoon, 
And knowing better than the instrument 
What winds are walking overhead, what zone 
Of grey unrest is moving across the land, 
I leave the book upon a pillowed chair 
And walk from window to closed window, watching 
Boughs strain against the sky

And think again, as often when the air 
Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting, 
How with a single purpose time has traveled 
By secret currents of the undiscerned 
Into this polar realm. Weather abroad 
And weather in the heart alike come on 
Regardless of prediction.

Between foreseeing and averting change 
Lies all the mastery of elements 
Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter. 
Time in the hand is not control of time, 
Nor shattered fragments of an instrument 
A proof against the wind; the wind will rise, 
We can only close the shutters.

I draw the curtains as the sky goes black 
And set a match to candles sheathed in glass 
Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine 
Of weather through the unsealed aperture. 
This is our sole defense against the season; 
These are the things we have learned to do 
Who live in troubled regions.


Storm Warnings by Adrienne Rich

Gauntlet

You thought you were brave before. No.
You must be braver.

All their thick mitts are mad to strike 
you. You must be braver.

Follow the course to the end 
of the course. Of course, all their pinprick eyes love 

to stick you. Be braver. The race is not yet done, 
not by half, and every savage tongue

lives to whip you. Braver. This, all this, 
is the making of you.

You thought you were brave 
before. No. No, you must be braver.

Gauntlet by KC Trommer

Author of the debut poetry collection We Call Them Beautiful (Diode Editions, 2019)
https://www.diodeeditions.com/product-page/we-call-them-beautiful | 

Founder of QUEENSBOUND: www.queensbound.com

Recordings of my published poems and recordings of the work of poets I admire.

Popular tracks by KC Trommer