Benjamin Balthaser – Big City Lit

Hills Like White Elephants

Benjamin BalthaserSummer 2021, Summer 2021 Poetry

by Benjamin Balthaser On Jaffa Street, I watched Russian mobsters beat a man to death in front of a bar. The sound of the pipes striking bone was strangely hollow, long boxes of darkness that drifted down the empty street. All that was left of the beaten man was gauze and the black triangle of

On Hearing the News of a Friend’s Death While in Honolulu, November 2019

Benjamin BalthaserSummer 2021, Summer 2021 Poetry

by Benjamin Balthaser The red hooded birds on this island city run in formation, like disciplined school children, boxed on branches, scattered before the windshields of King St’s blue scooters. Everything else is heat. The banks of the canal blaze into green. The sky darkens like wool under water. There are so many possible bridges