Table of
Contents
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The Boulevardier’s Dawn/Cocktail Hour
Pilasters held up the roof of night
an unusual clement evening shortly past
the equinox
about were yet sprinkled holiday
lights
otherwise Manhattan washed
in twilight
twilight a fulsome and savvy blue
as pumped by an accordionist
sky the shade of a philosophe –
subtle, contradictory
when pilasters held up the roof of night
an aperitif of blue, twilight that piques
the senses
seeming to dissolve the divide to Paris
from Lexington Avenue to Left Bank
le Deuxieme e Duane Street
Champs Elysee and Chelsea
booksellers along the Seine
fringing Central Park, browsing the volumes
alors, in twilight – Paris a mere moment away,
a dip in “‘le pond Atlantique’”
the night pilasters held up the roof of night
beyond: the slow-divulging skein of Infinity
the eve moonrise (with its quadrant of frost)
is marked by propinquity
twilight: blue amour: as day seduces starlight
Patricia Polak
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URBAN DANCE OF THE HOURS
City for toe taps not teardrops
the melody of Manhattan is upbeat:
assuming you do not falter;
get kicked in the teeth
a spin before Radio City Rockettes
like clockwork mannequins
must outdo their chorus line
a practiced prance,
Carnegie Hall,
a Bohemian polka,
a spritely one
of the sashay bye-and-bye,
Brooklyn Bridge
Empire State Building,
a lovelorn aping ballad
kisses like keyboards – possible
to be arpeggio-d
to the singer’s tambourine jangle,
the lone figure on the subway platform
jumps
Patricia Polak
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DORMER
Lynx that prowls my East River slumbers
yawning predator sprung skyway to prey
chaplet of novices poised for gondola ride
Big Apple tram rocking its earthward parabola
none in brown Benedictine humble cloth
fail to make landing
cat must with amber-eye re-visit its lair
dawn brings focus on beams of 18-wheeler
foggy A.M. in the capital of glitzy dreams
Patricia Polak__
VANTAGE
In the cirrus and the nimbostratus and upmost stories
of the Chrysler Building, Woolworth, World Trade
Manhattanscape is zebra-ing of architecture and road-
ways alight with talent and traffic signals
Look-see to the harbor-lands and the flatlands, and the
outer-lands of Queens
past Hoboken (oh! surely past) then all New Jersey,
westward
on northward beyond the harp strings of bridge,
the geology of palisades, northward ever until
dissolved from sight perhaps behind a Catskill
empyrean surfeit with demigods and Muses; upon the
city such creative urgencies: singularities,
monumentalities, hybrids of the 7 Arts
Stand on this pinnacle vantage: Rockefeller Center,
Empire State Building and vaunt, vaunt it
Patricia Polak__
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