Published online reading, Poetry Matters, 2017.
FEAR OF FIRE. LOWER EAST SIDE, 1966.
The old woman does not sleep for fear of fire
in her my fifth-floor walkup at the corner
of Second Avenue and Sixth Street.
Finally, around three a.m.
fatigue descendsand smothers her
until daylight stabs her back to life.
She turns on her companions,
the coffee maker first, and then
on shrunken limbs she shuffles to the television.
She puts breadcrumbs on the pie plate
on the fire escape to feed the birds, but
only pigeons come.
Once a day a nice lady brings her meals, but
she is always “too busy” to sit
and talk awhile.
Mrs. Gambi, the next-door neighbor,
just went clattering down the stairs,
on a rubber covered gurney.
The siren was not on when the ambulance drove away.
The old woman is the only one left on the fifth floor now,and She does not sleep for fear of fire.
“GRANDPA,” 1950.
“Is that your grandpa?”the kid asked
tossing his head sideways
in the direction of the old man
standing a few feet from me
against the chain link fence
in the school yard.
Did I answer?
Forty years later,
I wish I’d thrown an icy stare.
That I hadn’t said NO
That I’d said, ‘That’s my Dad.”
The old guy was my dad.
Dads had young and vigorous bodies
and hair.
Not mine.
Mine was not ‘normal.’
After that day,
‘Pops’ did not meet me at school.
He withdrew and lingered
far from the schoolyard
waiting for me to meet him
at a distance,
and to hug him
out of site but
not out of scent
of alcohol.
SHE LEFT A NOTE …
then hanged herself
in a dreary skid row SRO,
The Bowery, Lower East Side.
Who am I?
I don’t know.
Can’t find my parents.
No traces, no tracks.
Nothing.
Who am I?
What was I to be?
No one can tell me,
No one show the way.
Nothing.
Who am I?
I can’t find out.
No one knows me
And I know no one.
I am nothing.
Santa Fe Reporter, March 2020.
RIDING AT SUPPER TIME WHERE RICH FOLKS LIVE, 1951.
My nine-year-old legs
pedal through the vapors
of good food drifting
from lighted evening windows
of good homes
in good neighborhoods.
What is it?
I want to know
Ain’t ground beef,
don’t smell like hot rancid grease.
Ain’t chicken,
smells fresh different,
something I ain’t had before
something rich folks eats, I guess.
Someday I’m going to get some, too.
But how?
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