Poetry by Arielle McManus

                 ​patrick yagow CC




Promise Me This One Thing

Why does the rainwater that rushes under the grate at Hart and Tompkins smell the way a penny pressed to the roof of the mouth feels?

The space between our bodies was negative space –

until it wasn’t

 – and then became unbridgeable, which then made the space between my body and all other bodies feel unbridgeable.

But then again, the stretch between Bedford and Nostrand used to bring me to my knees

and I got over that.

There are a lot of versions of myself I swore I’d never become. Yet here I sit, taking photos of myself crying into a gilded mirror.

I need to know that I’m capable of loving a person forever.






Sun Salutation

I picked up burritos at the corner shack. I hate beans and I hate tortillas, but fuck, they’re cheap. 

Split the cost of a nip of Jack to pour into Coke cans that we got from the vending machine on the beach.

I try to peer into binoculars on the shore, but they’re blacked out, and I spent all my quarters on the lotto.

Only because you told me to, directly after you told me that you think about me. A lot. And in that moment I was feeling lucky.

(I didn’t win any money and now I’ve been washing all my clothes in the shower, because I spent all my quarters on the lotto)

Sun rises like candy floss, the color of blankets that swath newly birthed babies, and wanes in fire.

The same way I imagine we do.

​
​

Arielle McManus is a writer, learning as she goes and crafting one liners from a tiny, sunlit room in Brooklyn. She is an assistant editor at Atlas & Alice, and her writing has been published by a variety of literary publications including Passages North and Entropy Magazine.