City Read

The exiled poet
with no passport
or papers
only a letter
from Ginsburg
gets into a cold cab
with riffs
from Coltrane
out the dirty window,
it starts to snow
tiny flakes
like stolen kisses
on the windshield,
the sky is absent
and the fare
keeps rising,
the poet jumps
out of the taxi
on the asphalt street,
moonstruck for miles
hitches a rise
from a surrealist
with action paintings
in her van,
gets to the reading
with Ginsburg
giving us kisses.

BZ Niditch

Archived 12/22/2011