Poetry of Issue #8        Page 70

RIVINGTON

as the dream-crow flies
Rivington street is all busy pushcarts of apples
and apples to steal, bustling jewish immigrant
green horns, fresh tub butter cut from the block

and Joey the magician
and his mom bull dyke Annie cigarette
dangling off her chin in bell bottom trousers
she worked in coney island
and uncle Nate who stole pennies from children's pockets

where there's smoke
love is not always the cure
this poem hardly a pronoun simply pro-cures
it is the fact
the picture
the shot

hey, watch this
Joey's hands shuffling the deck in the hallway

illuminates

before dark

a new card trick!

  E.L.Freifeld