Rachel Fenton

New York

New York, cold as discovery
on the Friday morning my mother’s text
informs me my father had a heart

attack - we are estranged;
what is to be done about that?

Not one, two, but three four five

days of visiting libraries
I can leave but never recover
from. Charlotte’s waiting. Truth

will
be cradled
spine
felt
green "
as a cover
against a wall

of books, one I’ll return to

in photographs, blurred as froth on beer
pulled too fast from the tap.