Thursday, February 23, 2017

Fire Escape - A Poem (From "Speaking to the Darkness")


From this metal perch
pigeons circle overhead,
the Brooklyn sun
blazing, baking
tenement walls,
melting rooftops
to goo,

this, my balcony,
where I read novels
after school, my feet
dangling through bars,
three stories from earth,
-- part of the sky

the rumble of
the L train stirs
periodically, the snore
of a giant
asleep beneath me

no bird song -- simply
the whirs and sirens,
the shouts of dinner
out windows

accompanied by
the gentle sway
of working class clothes
strung from lines --

celebrating liberation
from life's routine.

By Mary E. Lohan

Photograph by John Albok

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