AMERICAN DREAM SONNET BETWEEN US

By Dolapo Demuren

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5 Between us, crows swim over baby hills. One brushes your hand. / Between us, I see my father’s clothes in the browning trees. / Between us, plastic bags smile in the East River. / Between us letters in road signs disappear by sunlight: eleven hands gathering the alphabet on the Barclays Center’s paneled roof.

6 From Greenpoint to Brighton Beach, green leaves like a silent choir, between us. / Underneath my / mother’s head (keep this between us), doors shine like jackets. / Which one should we open? Between us, space. What can we say to one another

7 south of the Brooklyn Bridge, where cobblestones sit like peaches in the street; you drop three feathers from your hands the color of raisins, between us.

8 A Dodger cap bobs in the East River. / Do the winds rim through Daffodil Hill with more patience than exists between us? / In your sleep, you talk to the air between us, manage another Brooklyn: the streets lost / to ocean water– / lamplight like asterisks in the waves / children fish out stars with their hats.

Dolapo Demuren is a Nigerian-American writer from the Washington D.C. area. He received his B.A. in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University, M.F.A. from Columbia University. His honors include fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation and The Academy for Teachers, scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and two Pushcart Prize nominations. His poems and other writings are featured in the Adroit Journal, On the Seawall, Frogpond Journal, Prelude Magazine, and more. He teaches creative writing at the University of Maryland College Park, where he is the associate director of the Jiménez-Porter Writers’ House.