Brian McDonald
Street

Where veteran amputees hold out their empty coffee cups
Where old ladies reek of whiskey and crawl along
the urine-stained cement.
Their best Sunday dress.
And glass shrapnel floats in the brown puddles like children.
I think of the Zambezi,
my Spanish boots stick.
The Mississippi's brown, wide as well,
but unfit for my travels
Venice's cobblestone, cold and wet, and
I smell cannolis.
Filthy.
I haven't any money.
I am not your son, my dear.
I walk the avenue, the boulevard, the street
making my way toward Algerian sand.

<< Back to Issue 0, 1998