Poetry in Motion
New York
Leave It All Up to Me
Major Jackson
Leave It All Up to Me
All we want is to succumb to a single kiss
that will contain us like a marathon
with no finish line, and if so, that we land
like newspapers before sunrise, halcyon
mornings like blue martinis. I am learning
the steps to a foreign song: her mind
was torpedo, and her body was storm,
a kind of Wow. All we want is a metropolis
of Sundays, an empire of hand-holding
and park benches. She says, “Leave it all up to me.”
This poem appears in Major Jackson's collection Holding Company (W. W. Norton, 2012).
Transitions (2001) © Louis Delsarte. MTA NYC Church Avenue Station.
Commissioned by MTA Arts & Design.
You can purchase the volume here.