Friday 10 November 2017

SUNDAY NYC

by Lorri Jackson


The small park garbagemen
have come and gone, sullenly hard
without good warnings; it is to be
expected. They are used to trash
Cops with faces as unmoving as metal
swing their sticks and clock the refuse
of Saturday night. They don’t go
for the good morning either.
Is it time to bail out
or what?
I am desperate now, not with
out luck or missing yellow trains
deserted not by lack
of money, a hungry belly, sleeping
in hard random places
                 desperate
with the sight of ungainly lovers
one fat, one too thin, faces
pockmarked with small dreams
grown together, We should all be
so not alone, bound
as mirrors, happy
to settle for less than the epic

WANTED: to pass numbly
until this hour is rung again
Bells call good souls to comfort
to such a steadfast, unwrathful pair
of arms, so reliable
The 100th dog pisses by
and by the next tolling
the breakfast specials will be missed

Will I write you?
Always.


* * * * *

"Sunday NYC" is from So What If It's True: From the Notebooks of Lorri Jackson, edited by RW Spryszak, published by Thrice Publishing in 2017, and available on Amazon.com.

Lorri Jackson died in 1990 at the age of 28. She suffocated after injecting heroin. Some of her powerful work survives and tells her gritty truth without obvious complaint but with merciless accuracy.



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