February 2026
Tivoli
poetry by Alexander Pham
All summer, I was slowly dreaming;
I walked barefoot without feeling
through fields of wild carrot and garlic mustard
and at the swimming hole, a man took me
softly, in his mouth, like I would dissolve
under his tongue. That summer, three deer
bedded down in my yard, tiptoeing past
my window each night on their way off into
slumber. One evening I took attendance
and found my count off; I imagined—I had to—
that tardy fawn playing hooky, pulling all-nighters,
spending midsummer hours at the pub down
the road, where whiskey was cheap
and there was trivia on Wednesdays.
In-between rounds everyone went out back
to smoke Spirits and compare answers.
The capital of New York is Albany.
The state motto is Ever upward.
We were in Tivoli, and I was trying to forget
someone. That summer, a famous painter
passed away in the night. He was best known
for his abstract expressionism,
his sinuous curves on a color field like
shoelaces, or spaghetti, or lines to the heart.
They wrote about him in the paper,
and said, His estate, Rose Hill,
overlooks the Hudson, and I thought
to clip and paste the obit to send
to you, to say, This is where I am,
if you are interested, at all, in visiting.
Alexander Pham is a writer and educator. He currently teaches fiction and poetry at Johns Hopkins University as a McGarry Lecturer and previously received his MFA in Fiction from Johns Hopkins in 2025. He splits his time between Baltimore, MD and Brooklyn, NY.