Current
Issue
Volume 12.1
Dolapo Demuren
—
Another Walt Whitman
steals sleep at his office desk. The hands
in his watch wild and bronze. Noon-light
falls into hoodies like orange leaves; wind plucks
umbrellas from women along Montague street;
schoolchildren’s eyes like hot pink balloons.
Below, another Whitman spies a passenger’s watch
in an R train that shimmies beneath Brooklyn.
Men hide work emails with the soft bellies of their thumbs.
Tunnels hide the East River; its waves creased and sunlit
like the insides of clementines. I fall asleep on most trains.
Court Street Station is where I am meant to get off,
or is it Dekalb? What America do we have, if we cannot
dream in transit? My father’s first flight to the United States of
Ambition arrived hours late. His hands crease like
pillows under my mother’s head.
Dr. Dolapo Demuren (he/him) is a Nigerian-American writer from the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. He received his B.A. in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University, M.F.A from Columbia University and Ed.D from the University of Southern California. He is a 2025 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship Winner for his chapbook American Love Sonnets. His honors include a fellowship from the Cave Canem Foundation and The Academy for Teachers, as well as scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and nominations for the Pushcart Prize. His poems and other writings are featured or forthcoming in the Adroit Journal, On the Seawall, Prairie Schooner, Prelude Magazine, The Maine Review and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing at the University of Maryland College Park, where he is currently the associate director of the Jiménez-Porter Writers' House.
