Paired: Colombo + Skurnick

iSketch 104 by Jorge Colombo.
The cover of this week’s issue of The New Yorker features another iPhone sketch by Jorge. Read all about it.
View all Jorge’s 20×200 editions.

Grand Central, Track 23

I forgot to tell you it’s almost time to go.
The sun has distilled its particular worn essence
And the glittering trout is flipped on the bow.

A man asks me what time it is. I don’t know.
I have emptied my purse and wept in the presence
Of onlookers. I forgot to remember to go

Before eleven, when the steely arrow
Shot swimming to its underneath, tense
As a stream of salmon in reverse below

The laureled, relentless clocks. The sceptered row
Of columns dreams one o’clock, immense,
Inviolate. What time is it? I don’t know.

This story concerns the night I tried to go—
Though many times I flopped into the silence
Of orange plastic seating like onto the bow

Of a lonely ship, and felt my breathing slow.
The frail, retreating stand of columns prevents
The clocks from telling me time and time again to go.
At my feet, a glittering trout swims past the bow.

— Elizabeth Skurnick, from Check In