Three Poems by Sean Singer from "Today in the Taxi"

Rites

Today in the taxi I brought a woman from Morningside Avenue to 38th and 8th. She said
“I’m going to be singing back here...I have to rehearse.” She sang up and she sang
down, the alto-flutter and the tree stump cut from a hill.

A writer said: We call ourselves not only what we are, but also what we seek to be.

Driving, it must be noted, is about 10% physical and 90% mental. The wheel obeys the
commands of the rose brain and its taut rituals.

Dirt

Tonight in the taxi I got a call from a passenger. A man said, “Who is this?” I said, “You called me... you have the wrong number.” He said, angrily, “Your number was in my wife’s phone and it said ‘I’m on the way.’” I said, “I’m a taxi driver...maybe that’s what it is.” He hung up.

When Jeremiah asked for a solution to stopping the Golem who was destroying Prague, he was told: Write the alphabets backward with intense concentration on the earth. Do not meditate in the sense of building up, but the other way around.

I thought of a night at an East Village hotel when I didn’t—but almost did—have an affair with the visiting poet. She was a pair of scissors cutting a silent letter out of a word. Though the Golem has a human shape, you could say external beauty has been denied him. Hillel commented: Where there is no one, try to be a human being.

E Minor Sonata

Today in the taxi, driving north on 31st Street in Astoria, a bus went through a red light and nearly killed me and my passenger.

Hit with a heavy object, some carrion with wet fur is mis- shapen, red, part-raccoon, and washed in roadlight.

If ever there was wanting, you have found it. If something was lost, let it be discovered. Dusk’s varnish, please swallow the continent whole.

Earlier, my passengers were making out like they were the last people on Earth. Simone Weil said: Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

Sean Singer was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, in 1974. He has an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Rutgers University-Newark. Singer is the author of three books of poetry: Discography (Yale University Press, 2002), which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize and the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America; Honey & Smoke (Eyewear Publishing, 2015); and Today in the Taxi (Tupelo Press, 2022). In 2005 he was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Find out more about Sean Singer here.  You can purchase Today in the Taxi, from Bookshop, Amazon, and Tupelo Press.

Comments

[David Lehman]

"Today in the Taxi" -- how lively and innovative in concept, and how very real in substance. Mega kudos!

[Joel Weiner]

Excellent poems from this poet, I agree whole heartedly. Next we'll read from him "Today in the Uber" and "Today in the Lyft".
There are many poems yet written for "Today in the Subway" or "Today in the Bus"... Who's up for that challenge?

[jim c]

Agreed. And the "part-raccoon" image is terrific. Reminds me of Don Justice's image: "And the smell came back/and it was sweet."