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 100^th 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.