Poem: 5th Street
5th Street After art history, the widow drove me to my slum studio. Its only north-facing window overlooked the vacant lot where I saw a shootout my first night there.…
Poem: The Thing She Said to Me
The Thing She Said to Me The poets and rockers didn’t go beyond Avenue A, where the poverty was unromantic. My fifth-floor walk-up (Ave. C and 9th) looked over the…
Poem: For Penny
With the broken-hearted language of the abandoned, the orphan spoke into the rising smoke above the campfire. Her voice carried through the smoke and sparks into the night beyond where…