#title The Hangover in New York #subtitle After Wislawa Szymborska’s “The End and The Beginning” #author Kate Ennals #SORTauthors Kate Ennals; #date 2020 #source [[https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/407-fall-2020/the-hangover-in-new-york]] #lang en #pubdate 2020-11-06 #notes Fifth Estate #407, Fall, 2020 Note: Hangovers are cantilevered buildings in New York City. Italics are quotes from Wislawa Szymborska’s poem. Arise! Time to leave squalor, filth behind the wars, carts of corpses, sludge and ashes instead, let’s build heavens in New York’s blue skies ignore the shards of glass, the bloody rags below Look up to Manhattan’s fresh fields of cloud Purchase a thousand metres of empty air And cantilever, a feat of engineering: A tall, billowing palace of the firmament An inversion of the traditional wedding cake (because the higher you go, the more space is valuable) Here, homes are made of marble, onyx, steel, and lace Glittering towers, punch drunk with conspicuous Consumption on top of a world few can afford Where below rubbish is shoved to the roadside. Come! Raise your eyes to the future Gawk at the clouds, pay your dollar. Kate Ennals is a prize-winning poet and writer who has lived in Ireland for 25 years. She runs poetry and writing workshops in County Cavan. Her blog is at kateennals.com