FEATURED POST

SUMMER 1976

 

The corner of 42nd and 8th 

littered with shards of glass,
crushed Budweiser cans.

Cigarette butts and spent matches

peppered the sidewalk.

A girl in frayed shorts

and platform boots

next to a shuttered liquor store,

her laugh so loud it echoed in Central Park.

 

He was drenched in sweat.

Humidity plus fear

on this corner,

desperate Manhattan.

His aunt whispered,

Let’s go. It’s almost curtain time.

 

Forty years later, he returned to catch

the new, hit musical.

The one all his neighbors were talking about,

though none had seen it.

The columnist in the Times declared the

Disneyfied neighborhood an abomination,

the tourists from middle America, appalling.

He didn’t care.

The new glass towers 

and bustling passersby told him

everything was different.

He would not be murdered today.

 

He took his wife to an overpriced dinner at Marseille,

then to the theatre.

As he sank into the plus orchestra seat,

he wondered if he had forgotten something quaint

from his past.

 

Then the overture began.

 

Published in PROMETHEAN