June, East 74th Street

By Kyle Alderdice

For B + T

In the next room

my uncle is deciding

the mayor

of New York City

and I didn’t know

he had that power

until

the phone rang

all morning

when I stayed in to listen

to the rain

and I thought I’d write

but instead

I heard the pressures

of zoning

and tree placement

and who are you voting for

and of course they’re the worst

and hey be serious

and take a look

inside yourself.

I’m inscribing the present

I bought

for a wedding

in two days, a book

of poems, because

even though the couple

has lived

in New York forever

I don’t think

you can say you know

the city without reading

the dawns of James

Schuyler—and yes

I introduced them

but I didn’t rebuild

the concrete—

our steel cathedral

—with only words

each morning

so let’s give credit

where credit is due.

Hilma Af Klint is at MoMA

and Sargent is at the Met

and though I may feel old

at thirty I think

I needed to be this wise,

this tired, to really appreciate

that witches exist

and demons really do speak

through us and that

Madame X was a boy

just for one frame

and the hard line

that hides behind

the soft glow

of the skin of society

women was always

the bone of a different jaw

he brushed, a face

he remembered kindly

enough to call Baby

in his letters.

Sometimes the way we

say things in English is not

just enough but right.

About the Author

Kyle Alderdice is a fiction writer, poet, and French translator from New York. He is the winner of the 2025 American Short(er) Fiction Prize chosen by Tony Tulathimutte, and his work appears in Swing, Carve (Editor’s Choice 2023 Raymond Carver Contest), The Broadkill Review (4 poems) and StrangeHymnal, among others. He has received funding from the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference, which he attended in 2024 and 2025. He studied French and Political Science at Duke University and holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of North Carolina Wilmington.