|
While In Brooklyn
Only one person broke a bottle over your head.
You could strut, you could knock someone
off their perch, pore over their wardrobe
with wise remarks, you could steal a few notions
from the grocer. You could treat a ballfield
like a battlefield, you could scar a cheek, score
a matchbook from Mousie, steal the thunder
of the little genius and snap his pens in two.
You could hustle girls who didn't know better.
In a pinch you could deliver for the dry cleaner.
You could make sense of a block, on a good day
a half-mile square, but after that if you cross
the bridge to the marsh that's a swamp,
if you're lucky you see a young blue crab squirm
in a stranger's palm. There's world order
in that murky water with its cattails and oil spills,
and under the surface a corpse or two.
|
