Dreamship Helmsman
Maria lulls me to slumberland, where I amcharged with sailing a ship with seventeenthousand children aboard. My first jobafter getting a captain’s license. I declinedto tell my employer about my narcolepsy.Instead I decorate the helm’s spokeswith bells, so I rouse upon hearingtheir rings and arrive in time for the wedding.
Feature Date
- August 23, 2024
Series
Selected By
Share This Poem
Print This Poem
Copyright © 2024 by Alan Felsenthal.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Logan Fahey
Alan Felsenthal is the author of Hereafter (The Song Cave, 2024) and Lowly (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017). His writing has appeared in BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, and The New York Times Magazine. He is the the editor of Bookworm: Conversations with Michael Silverblatt (The Song Cave, 2023) and the coeditor of A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind: The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton (The Song Cave, 2013). He currently teaches poetry at NYU Tandon School of Engineering.
June 2024
Brooklyn, New York
Managing Editor
Charles Schultz
Managing Director
Sophia Pedlow
Poetry Editor
Anselm Berrigan
InTranslation Editors
Donald Breckenridge
Jen Zoble
Founded in October 2000 and currently published 10 times annually, the Brooklyn Rail provides an independent forum for arts, culture, and politics throughout New York City and far beyond.
Our journal, in addition to featuring local reporting; criticism of music, dance, film, and theater; and original fiction and poetry, covers contemporary visual art in particular depth. In order to democratize our art coverage, our Critics Page functions with a rotating editorship, which such luminaries as Robert Storr, Elizabeth Baker, Barbara Rose, Irving Sandler, and Dore Ashton have helmed.
“The Rail is the best publication of its kind in New York—and it keeps getting better.”
—Paul Auster
“The Rail is an eminently readable, informative, and intellectually wide-ranging publication…. It is great to have one’s brain shaken up by such a lively venue!”
—Nancy Spero
“A brilliantly conceived and beautifully executed newspaper, the Rail is making an absolutely crucial contribution to the intellectual life of the city and even the nation.”
—Richard Serra
Poetry Daily Depends on You
With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.
