Loveliness
Daniel Romo
Fan
Monty Reid
Men behind me in Bryant Park spoke of
Moses and the impending nuclear end of
the world while I learned
a group of ladybugs is called
a loveliness.
And I won’t let the hot dog man at The Met
who yelled at me because
my bushel of Apple Pay is often finicky
spoil the bunch of street vendors
I’ve patronized.
At a church I visited in Harlem,
the pastor told the congregation,
You are going to die,
and I applaud when churches
offer first-time guests free donuts
and directness.
In this Brooklyn coffeehouse after
a text from my mom in Nevada,
I feel like such a speck in a world of regulars
who are on a first name basis
with these boroughs
and baristas.
How can one feel so alone
in a state of so much motion
and with so many blends?
A congregation is a group of alligators.
A flamboyance is for flamingos.
And a man is a new transplant
attempting
to reroot.
Daniel Romo is the author of American Manscape (Moon Tide Press 2026), Bum Knees and Grieving Sunsets (FlowerSong Press 2023), Moonlighting as an Avalanche (Tebot Bach 2021), and other books. He received an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte, and he lives, writes, and rides his bike in NYC. More at danieljromo.com or Instagram.
Monty Reid is an Ottawa poet. He has coupled a 30-year career in museums (Provincial Museum of Alberta. the Royal Tyrrell Museum, Canadian Museum of Nature) with an even longer career as a poet. He has published a dozen full-length collections and almost 30 chapbooks with small presses across Canada and abroad. A new collection, Intelligence 1.1, is forthcoming from the University of Calgary Press and he is currently completing Intelligence 1.2. He worked for Arc Poetry Magazine for many years and was the Director of VerseFest, Ottawa’s international poetry festival, for almost a decade. Now retired, he can be found in his backyard garden, trying to grow peaches. Find Monty on BlueSky and Instagram.