Egan Garr
November Sonnet
In our tour of cities, Paris always wins
We work better here, you say, and I
slip my hand below, check the map, stop to tie
my laces back, let you pass me past the
crowd so the city sinks between us and them
until all of Paris is our own. We walk in sky
a looking glass, an early moon, a waxing height
we string us to, the interim
a parallax, you say, the street an open view
Then? Let us stand to this immense
watch the hands of god or matter shift
bodies past bodies past cities past you
you say, and all of Paris
then all of us
Egan Garr is a queer poet and translator from the American South, now living in Amsterdam. In 2002, they co-founded Versal, a literary journal and later small press. Garr translates contemporary Dutch and Flemish poetry into English, including works by the new Netherlands poet laureate Nisrine Mbarki Ben Ayad and the celebrated writer Simone Atangana Bekono, and is the author of two chapbooks, Terrane (MIEL, 2015) and The Preservationist Documents (Pilot Books, 2012). Poems and translations can recently or soon be found in The Hopkins Review, Action, Spectacle, Asymptote, Always Crashing, and The Canary.