New York City at night

Here, in my Manhattan room / insomnia tugs at me like a half-closed taxi door / letting all the echoes in / an ambulance carries the last breath of an asthmatic man / a few blocks away, a party spills over the rim of a rooftop / champagne fizz bleeding onto fire escapes / a wasted man howls into an empty alley / a tourist family dreams in postcard colours / a night-owl jogger runs in sports gear / three floors down, a man folds his infidelity into cheap hotel sheets / across the street, a college student—eyes hollow—types his assignment on a bioluminescent screen / not far, an orgy unfurls its limbs in the unseen crevices of a clandestine club / the first cry of a newborn ricochets throughout a hospital and fuses with the clamor of the street / somewhere, a woman pisses on a plastic stick and learns she is pregnant / and the city is pregnant too / with cosmopolitan offspring that breathe among the skyscrapers / within the lungs of New York City’s crowded womb.

Erwin Arroyo Pérez is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief at The Poetry Lighthouse. He also teaches literature and works as a translator in Paris. He holds a Master’s degree in English Literature and Linguistics from Université Paris Nanterre and King’s College London. Erwin’s poetry has been published in Paloma Press, The Nature of Our Times, The Winged Moon, Wildscape journal, Respublica Politics, Nanterre University Press, Des Nouvelles Heloise, and other American, British and French literary magazines. thepoetrylighthouse.com