Trying to bridge the gap 1 | Mayzie Sattler
After Joan Mitchell’s The Bridge, 1956, oil on canvas.
You suggest, when this is over
and we’re settled up north,
we should calculate the miles,
the hours,
the tolls paid,
the gallons of gas,
the trips over the bridge.
I try it in my head while
crossing the Throgs Neck,
that’s twice this weekend, two miles each way,
plus nine on the Hutchinson, eleven on the Cross Island,
forty-six on the Long Island Expressway,
and seven or so on the William Floyd, twice.
We find romance in the discount from my EZ-Pass,
six dollars and ninety-four cents, twice.
There’s something about the blind corner
before the bridge’s peaks make their way into view,
the reaching up into heaven,
the joining between, the meeting.
Sometimes, when a week passes without you I wait for night,
for the lights to flicker
over trees and remind me of how we’ve bridged the gap.
This is an ode to the bridge,
an ode to its height, just barely meeting
the horizon, making itself known.
I look at Joan’s bridge and choose colors for us,
decide we are two smears of red
etched in dark, separated by a color so solid,
steeling and suspended black-blue.
I trust Joan’s bridge to carry me to you,
to keep open lines between two red islands.
This is an ode to the strength
of Joan’s bridge, to the black road
over black water, to the hours
and tolls paid, to you at the other end.
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1 This title comes from Joan’s ex-husband, Barney Rosset, in his plans for a novel about his time living in Brooklyn with Mitchell: “Painting the bridge can be used as a symbol. She is trying to bridge the gap between wanting to be a painter and being a painter.” From “Painter” by Sarah Roberts, Joan Mitchell, page 23, San Francisco Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press, 2020.
Mayzie Sattler is a poet from Upstate New York. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College, where she served as Poetry Editor for Lumina Journal and Co-Director of the Sarah Lawrence College Poetry Festival. Mayzie has read for Black Ocean and the Southampton Review, and interned for Black Lawrence Press. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Mid-Atlantic Review, Coffin Bell Journal, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Dodging The Rain and elsewhere. She was long-listed for the ONLY POEMS 2025 Poet of the Year Prize. Mayzie lives in Kingston, NY.