A collaborative project is letting Queens poets showcase their talents while celebrating the borough’s beauty, resilience and strength. It’s also matching verses with local subway stations.
QUEENSBOUND has launched an interactive website with 33 poems, including verses about Astoria, Corona, Elmhurst, Flushing, Forest Hills, Jackson Heights, Jamaica, LeFrak City, Long Island City, Rego Park, Ridgewood, Sunnyside, and Woodside. It features an interactive subway map where each stop corresponds to a different composition. Users simply press on a station to hear a recited poem.
For example, hit the 7 train’s 82nd Street button for Vikas K. Menon’s “Queens Communion.” Try the E Train’s Jamaica Center for Sherese Francis’s “Liberty Ashes.”
Listeners can hear all the poems via SoundCloud. Here’s a sample of newly created works.
Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond’s “Packed”
MA Dennis’s “ATCQ (A Tribe Called Queens)”
Nadia Q. Ahmad’s “Stretching Strength”
The entire map follows.
7 Train
Vernon Jackson — Ben-Oni’s “Matarose Tags G-Dragon on the 7”
33rd Street — Jama’s “Industrial Design & Sunset”
33rd Street — Francisco’s “Below the 7 Train at 33rd and Rawson, A Hammer Falls”
40th Street — Javier’s “A True Account of Talking to the 7 Line in Sunnyside”
46th Street – Trommer’s “7 to 46th Street/Bliss”
52nd Street — Legaspi’s “[ their spine ]”
Woodside/61st Street — Hartounian’s “Next Summer”
69th Street — Hogan’s “Before Your Arrival”
69th Street — Sherbow’s “Seeing the Apartment at 69th Street”
74th Street/Broadway — Lima’s “When They Come for Us on the 7 Train”
74th Street/Broadway — Romani’s “Diversity Plaza”
82nd Street — Menon’s “Queens Communion”
90th Street — Hoque’s “Here I Love You New York”
103rd Street/Corona Plaza — Rehman’s “Corona (and I’m not talking about the beer)”
Mets-Willets Point — DeGraff and Burba’s “BOOM Mata: A QUEENSBOUND Mash Up”
Flushing/Main Street — Dennis’ “ATCQ (A Tribe Called Queens)”
Flushing/Main Street — Alvarez’s “149th Street Notebook”
E Train
Jackson Heights/Roosevelt Avenue — Terrone’s “Hawthorne Court”
Sutphin Boulevard — Delgado’s “Trains Are More Than Metaphors”
Jamaica Center — Francis’s “Liberty Ashes (Keep Rising)”
M Train
Forest Avenue – Ostrom’s “Apatheia”
N Train
Astoria Boulevard — Lisella’s “Cornrows”
Ditmars Boulevard — Mobarak’s “Where the N Train Stops”
F Train
21st Street/Queensbridge — Bao’s “In Long Island City”
Jackson Heights/Roosevelt Avenue — Chang’s “Kalpana Chawla Way”
Elmhurst Avenue — Brew-Hammond’s “Packed”
Forest Hills — Hahn’s “Ode to the F”
75th Street — Vikram’s “Love Affair on the F Train”
J Train
Woodhaven Boulevard – Black’s “Not Even Once”
R Train
Jackson Heights/Roosevelt Avenue — Nair’s “In These Streets”
Woodhaven Boulevard — Tallie’s “Reckless Libations”
63rd Drive/Rego Park — Harél’s “All Possible Fates”
M Train
74th/Roosevelt — Ahmad’s “Stretching Strength”
Editor’s note: The photos in this post depict a live event that QUEENSBOUND, which KC Trommer founded in 2018, organized on Nov. 3, 2018. Participants gathered on the 7 train’s Queens-bound platform at the Vernon Boulevard-Jackson Avenue stop at 2 pm. Contributors then read poems out loud as the group rode eastward to Flushing. They got off at the Mets-Willets Point station and walked to Queens Museum for a reception.
Top image: Dawn Siff; bottom image: Josh Steinbauer