Though this year’s festival may be over, there are still those who have its works and impacts on their minds. Our Thinkers in Residence each went out during the festival days and engaged with the artists, the works, the public, and the street. They had their own reactions and interpretations of what they saw and experienced. As we look forward to 2017, let us take the time to look back on what these Thinkers thought and read their perspectives on this year’s festival.
Thinker in Residence: Chelsea Bunn
Chelsea Bunn was born and raised in New York. She received her MFA in Poetry from Hunter College in 2005, and was awarded a Norma Lubetsky Friedman Scholarship and the Academy of American Poets Prize. Her work has appeared in journals including Dogwood, Big City Lit, and Georgetown Review. She teaches Creative Writing for Hunter College’s English Department.
4. Peculiar flavor, taste, or strength, as of wine; the quality or qualities indicating origin or kind, as in wine.
I begged you not to let me go,
made you weep as if grieving
a loss on just your third day without me.
I sank myself inside
your memory, so that all
the men, all their faces,
the places you’d been, that long hourin the evening, the prospect of being alone
drowned in me, blurred.
I wasted you. Ruined
dresses, whole mornings, a marriage,
almost. Left you
thoughtless, graceless.
Wrecked you. Had you
believe you’d never learn to leave.
Turned you sour, an angry bitch at thirty.
Pickled you wicked, fearful. Let you
cheat. Took your balance,
took your time & blotted it out.
A black hunger at the core
of you I filled.
I made you ache
for me. Whispered wishes on your lips,
rippled cool beneath your
fingertips. Made you dirty, got you lost.
Watched you drive with one eye shut
in broad daylight, weaving
down the road that led to me.
When it came time to pay,
you felt ashamed—flushed,
you flickered weak &
trembled, your every nerve lit
by plain, absolute longing.
5. A root, esp. of green or dry ginger.
Yours is a clean burn—
quick, bracing.
You are remedy. You
thin blood. You, pure
heat, tonic
consumed for centuries.
Your resin soothes. Your skin
scraped, your flesh sliced.
