Quarter to two
Wednesday night
Wait half done
for the next train
home.
Eyes that have seen enough today
scan a ragged paperback
open on my lap.
Is that a good book?
asks the girl next to me
on the aluminum bench underground.
It is, I say,
closing it shut.
I turn toward
her: This black teen girl
peeling the label
from a too-red drink.
Out late on a school night
with a white boy
all bangs
and smiles
and braces.
There is warmth between them,
sweetness.
Less than love,
or greater
somehow.
City stories from long ago,
I explain.
Bowery.
Seaport.
Underbelly.
A spent fey boy chimes in
from the next bench down.
I worked 7 a.m. till 1.
Safe with us
now.
The bright station ours,
I read off the back,
of saloon-keepers
street preachers
gypsies.
I have them now.
Tip-tap-tip the title
into little screens.
I want to share more
of writers
records
artists
dreamers
but our train is here and
we are strangers
again.
My book is open
again.
I love it!
I like it!
Me thinks it’s grrrrreat
That you, Jack, are stretching
Your
Wings in the world of poem.
“Too-red”? the adage
In me, ‘show, don’t tell’
Yearns for the red of an over-half
Ripened strawberry, the red
I imagine being its bold
Outline of a sign which is saying
Maid-Rite Sandwich Shop.
Too-red? Redder than what?
I like it enough that I’m taking the time to type a comment even though there’s no simple “like” button for me to click. I thought I was there. I was sad when the train came too.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Hey J,
Saw that within your brief list of Facebook Books, is “Our Band Could Be Your Life.” You being a writer, and me a musician, we could have a mighty fine Salty dialogue concerning the Minutemen.
If everyone is happy with the blandness here, I understand, there are status updates to attend to, etc.
G
PS. something that’s been bugging me regarding books. You know how the NYT bestseller list is sort of the standard for literary desires among Americans, wouldn’t it be fairly easy to tabulate the top ten library books checked out on a given week? You don’t think it would be polluted by the muscle of publishing houses, would you?
Great stuff! (No fair that you’re talented at yet ANOTHER thing…)
I like Joseph Mitchell too. I wish there were more like him at the New Yorker today.
…til thee a zeitgeist chasms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjjkk4n0o4k
there really isn’t much left to say
i could scribble for Charles Simic to theorize over
bounding timelessly. which shows to watch. Funny
Fridays on IFC are long gone. three months ago. who
remembers taht.
i felt temptation. i felt like a sad tool
Crevassing, Crevassing
W in T he F do I know about taht?
seeing a movie on the southside of Houston St.?
there’s really not much left to say
i could scribble, and taht’s what
I’m done
by garrett miklusek aka Dumbfuck, the nickname given to me in college by some guy, some offspring of a PHD mom and multiple PHD Peruvian dad, who talked me into taking a poetry class, which turned into 4 semesters of it, and helped secure my future as an ongoing loser