Nostalgia In F Minor Poem by Alicia Patti

I remember
cobblestone streets,
tough kids using their own brand
of rhetoric, sweet-talking me down
dark alleys. Gang fights.

Fourth of July handouts - New-Deal
cookies for the underprivileged:
badges of honor for social workers.

Mosquito fires flickering in gutters,
double parking, hide and seek,
kick-the-can, stickball; old crones bickering
on tenement stoops.

Hard knocks from the University of Despair.
And then I graduated.