7/1/2015

"you will remember, for we in our youth did these things:
yes many  beautiful things" - Sappho's fragments

Greenwich Village, NYC

Only the 24th of June and
Simpson and i already
tire of the summer weather.

I always seem a little thinner these months
i note, i bite a strawberry candy and show her
how to light her lighter

just hand me the fork
no more callousness
both on palmflesh and human dealings

the building facades on Charles street
as in the southern Chawellsss....
she explains alcoholism runs in my family, you know?

i nod. no other problems i presume?
the community garden nods and
people who will always be richer,

prettier, strut past with tuesday briefcases
and their children's wheelcradles with ethiopian
and guatemalan hands on the handlebars

follow a block behind.
But we're from Joisey, and **** proud of it!
Lobster rolls and jimmies and johnnies and

boardwalk planks Erin dreams of
broadway instead and neonatal nursing,
who doesn't?

the only youth on the street that day we
teetertotter past all the cafes and pubs and
laundrymats

*you know, if this was the school year we'd
get picked up for skipping school