Street Scene
Early evening heat rises from
pavements, from cement and asphalt,
carrying a scent slightly sour,
slightly acrid—oily and tar-like.
Outside the café, beyond its fenced-in
tables, a large man looks down,
pleading with a small woman in a light
summer dress and with light-brown hair—
“But I gave it up, I gave it up for you,”
he repeats, “I gave it up for you . . .”
exactly what he gave up, we know not—
drink, drugs, that job in New York?
On one corner, an angle-front building
shows the “Nordstrom Rack” sign,
while around the next from it, a man
lies unconscious, as if dropped recently
from another kind of rack—his hand
droops at his side, offering no excuse,
as people walk and see “nothing here.”
Further down, the chalkboard sign
by the door of “Imperial Wines and Spirts”
proclaims “Four Bottles of Bourbon
for $100”—not a bad price, and open
Sunday, too, so no weekends lost.
The couple waiting at the crosswalk
nuzzle each other, feeling a different
heat, oblivious to the old woman
down the block, shouting angry
indecipherable rants in rasping tones,
sawing at the attention of the crowd.
We keep walking, having seen but
still unseeing—this show goes on nightly.
Above us, on the ledge beneath the sign
for “Charles Schwab Investments,” perches
a lone pigeon, observant but indifferent,
raising its right foot to adjust a feather.
Vincent Casaregola teaches American literature and film, creative writing, and rhetorical studies at Saint Louis University. He has published poetry in a number of journals, as well as creative nonfiction, short fiction, and flash fiction. His poetry collection, Vital Signs (dealing with illness, loss, trauma, and grieving), is now available from Finishing Line Press.
Featured image in this post is “1500 Block of K Street” by AgnosticPreachersKid, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
