Daniel Nester's poetry has appeared most recently in Fine Madness, Cream City Review, CrossConnect and
The East Village. He is editor in chief of La Petite Zine and a poetry editor for Painted Bride Quarterly.
He was recently a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.





Overhearing the Consciousness Seminar, NYU

Now is the time to adjust the keel,
to give time's quadrant area,
an axis-exact point
begging for its job back.
Someone's else's idea
just debunked another's,
sent it back to the shop.
Now is the time to reply,
to throw another kibble
on the table, advertisingly,
address another's queries
about the key to the room,
the cup left standing
in the lobby. Take
them away, please.
Depending on the content,
I of course have no way
of knowing if there
exists some zombie
replicant of myself,
“dual to me,” one says
awkwardly, and that
homunculus outcast
would feel no pain.
I have no way of knowing this.
Neither does the axis,
but the pleasure of others
may take this or that inferrer
out of the debate, who,
just for shits and giggles,
says the opposite truth.
That doesn't intrigue me, either.
Now is the time to simply
acknowledge the opposite
can exist. There.
It's standing, right there,
drinking from
a tall, elaborate cup.







Elegy Redux as Interlude

And I quote directly
from an old poem of mine,
“Elegy to the Sublime” -
“I'll begin with an ending,
concentrating so hard
on whatever music is played
or handed down to me
that I'll end up on the couch,
kissing my arms.”
That's it. That's the end.
You can turn the page now.







Tomorrow Never Knows

That perennial middle-C
was at it again, that rude
accompaniment to my reading,
and all the old totems,
all shuffled dyspepsia pared
down to the heater clangs and,
If we were good Freudians,
as my old teacher used to say,
we could somehow apply
all of this high-minded allegory
to that one part when there's silence,
all quiet except for the skipping-rock
sound of keyboards. Tonight
my confidence stumbles,
looks for the time and fails
as empty as a cooling car
manifold, a distraction to
this final blurt out loud.