Poet and artist E.J. McAdams shares a couple poems

• Tea Ceremony
• —East Village, NYC

• You and I
• lived on this street once –

• we
• are a we still

• death’s not parted.
• Boy! the banks have moved in

• you can barely see the moon.
• “Large chamomile with honey, thanks.”

• Veselka is old
• And so am I.

• Orange pumpkins kigo.
• Hard to write

• while walking and holding
• hot, hot, hot! tea…

• men transform to
• dads, husbands and women

• only it seems
• in this form. Steeped –

• take out bag just so
• spins in repose:

• hypnotist’s watch.
• Tea bag’s tag says:

• Even the extraordinary
• Bows to the end.

• Gerritsen Creek, Brooklyn
• March 16
• Almost at once the same but not quite the same again
• Change changes
• And no one knows how
• So winter changes into spring
• And know one knows how
• So spring comes:
• Red maple buds
• Blossom red maple blooms
• Red leaflets loosening
• Unfurling in air
• Then where does it go?

• March 17
• Almost at once the same
• But not quite like the day before
• Light yes lighter maybe
• But blue definitely bluer than before
• Somewhat bluer
• Eye still pale blue
• Paler than the sky more or less
• Abandoned cars rust yet not all gone yet
• No sound
• March sound
• Marsh sound
• Geese and gulls!
• Mudflat imperceptible opens cordgrass
• Opens earth open again
• Like yesterday like last spring and all springs
• But different still again
• New
• Not new
• Nevermore new

E.J. McAdams is a poet and artist, exploring language and mark-making in the urban environment using procedures and improvisation with found and natural materials. He has published three chapbooks: ‘4x4’ from unarmed journal press, ‘TRANSECTs’ from Sona Books, and most recently ‘Out of Paradise,’ an e-chapbook from Delete Press. UDP published his 4x4 – “BOOM/BOOM/BOOM/BOOM” – in its Poste series. He had a solo exhibition, an installation called Trees Are Alphabets, at The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and a mail-art piece in a group show at Phoenix Art Museum. His poems have been published in The Paris Review, EOAGH, eccolinguistics, About Place Journal, unarmed journal, and others. He was chosen by Laura Mullen and Angela Hume for ‘Heir Apparent’ in The Volta’s Trash Issue which featured a visual TRANSECT. Another visual poetry project, ‘Wayfaring,’ was covered by author Robert Sullivan on A Public Space’s blog. He curated the Social-Environmental-Aesthetics reading at EXIT ART from 2009-2012 and was a founding board member of the interdisciplinary Laboratory of Art Nature and Dance (iLAND).