somewhere within three blocks
of here a limo is disgorging
or swallowing up passengers
a child is dreaming of taking
lessons on a piano or violin
of Carnegie or Alice Tully Halls
a woman is remembering
what the touch of his fingers
felt on her cheek, tracing
her jaw, not shattering it,
a tagger prepares for battle
carefully loading his makeshift
holster after clearing
each nozzle, plotting which walls
will be an evening’s canvas
but across from here there is
the same red brick building
five store fronts each with
barred doors drawn tight
staring, with no hope of parole
a green grocer, two bananas
rotting on the stoop,
a tailor’s naked mannequin
head turned backwards in shame
a locksmith whose lock
dwarfs the others though
there is nothing within to hide
and two vacant hollow spaces
like eyes of the dead
rheumy, semi-opaque voids
and eight neat rows
of six sooty windows each
behind which others hide
from the anger and fury
they would unleash on the city
if they could overcome their fear.
Louis Faber has previously appeared in Atlanta Review, Arena Magazine (Australia) Exquisite Corpse, Rattle, Eureka Literary Magazine, Borderlands: the Texas Poetry Review, Midnight Mind, Pearl, Midstream, European Judaism, Greens Magazine, Afterthoughts, The South Carolina Review and Worcester Review, among many others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
