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About Eric Silver.

Eric Dies aka Heddy’s Reoccurring(1) Dream (as in sleepy dream)

ERIC SILVER loves cardigans, big headphones, and summer camp. He is the co-founder, president, and three-time team member of Slam! at NYU, NYU's slam poetry team. His work as been published in The New Library, In Bantam, The Theory of Everything, and other publications. As an Emerging Jewish Artist Fellow at the Bronfman Center, he self-published his first book of poetry, Post-Awkward Expressionism.

 

Almost an NYU graduate and future teacher, he wants to be somewhere between Robin Williams in Dead Poets' Society and KRS-One. You can read more of his work here: http://elsilvero.tumblr.com/tagged/poemspoemspoems

Wait wait wait, hold on. Read this.

 

1) You don’t know my friends. I know my friends. They’re the kind of people who’d bail you out of jail, but make copies of the mug shot and mount it on the wall.

2) Footnotes demand immediacy. Respect them, like a mother ringing a triangle for dinner. You love your mother, don’t you?

3) Show me a drunk night, and I’ll write you a tragedy.

 

Usually just me, Eric, and Joe are present, but occasionally Nadia’s there too. It’s around 3 in the morning, we’ve had a great night out at bars. It’s that kind of night where we don’t need or want to have other people around. We’re going to get food near 14th and 1st, sometimes we’ll argue over Artichoke vs. $1 pizza (2), because Joe is afraid of vegetables (3). Eric’s texting as we walk and therefore falls behind the rest of us. We’ll run across the street quickly as the light changes. Eric, because he’s on his phone texting (4), doesn’t notice and suddenly there’s a large bang followed by a series of smaller bangs. The car is gone, we don’t even see it drive away, and Eric’s face down on the pavement, his phone (5) is nowhere to be seen. Immediately, I run over to him, while Joe calls 911 and plays traffic cop. When Nadia’s there she also runs over to Eric, usually cradles Eric’s head in her lap. I check Eric’s heartbeat (6) and any external injuries. Nadia and I just talk to Eric, we just talk to get him to talk back to us. Sometimes he comes to and when does, he’s not optimistic. From time to time, he’ll tell us things that you’d say on your deathbed (7). We try to brush it off, telling him he’ll live, but his words hit deep. It’s clear that Joe can’t get too close to Eric because he’s scared, but he keeps a watchful eye. We see the flashing (8) lights of the ambulance before it pulls up. The paramedics are clearly very concerned. Nadia and I hold Eric’s hand as he’s loaded in. Joe gets into the ambulance and we rush to the hospital. There, we wait and wait. We make phone calls and more people (9) show up. We end up in a weird, makeshift pile (10) as we wait for a doctor, any doctor.

  1. I think I have died at least five times. When I play Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 with my friends, we don’t talk about it, but it must be hard losing to someone who’s partly ghost.

  2. We got money to drink, but none for food.

  3. Shredded cheese and taco meat in his capillaries.

  4. I’m kind of a self-absorbed dick, aren’t I? In the midst of a wonderful, I’m-going-to-remember-these-nights-when-I-have-responsibilities-and-I-saw-Joe-last-two-years-ago-when-he-was-redwinedrunk-at-Nadia’s-wedding experience, I’m on my phone. Also, who the hell am I texting at 3am anyway?

  5. By the third retelling, I think it’s the old Blackberry I had junior year, the one that restarted when I exhaled the wrong way. A Rasputian sort of electronic, devil in a Simcard.

  6. Lubdub. Lubdub. Quiver. Lubdub. Repeat.

  7. “Don’t go into my bedside table. Haha, that was a deathbed joke. Don’t call my mom until the clock runs out. She’s not coming up from the South unless its for a good reason. What’s going to happen to y’all after I’m gone?”

  8. apoplectic fit in the night, red covers all the windows

  9. my twin brother, the guy who handed out coupons for BBQ in 2009, a tangential friend who is simultaneously that friend but also an ostrich, our gorgeous freshman year RA who dated Joe and wrote poems him (one where he was an Italian solider, another when he was Fox Mulder) until he fucked it up on purpose, Jefferson Davis, my most recent ex-girlfriend (who brought homemade gluten free, dairy free brownies as consolation, though I secretly hope it’s a reward for me when I wake up), Heddy’s seventh grade math teacher, Edward James Olmos in Battlestar dress blues.​

  10. I don’t know what this means, but I’m jealous I’m not alive for it.

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