South Bronx Poem by Robert Ronnow

While I'm reading a poem about it on the previous page
the girls come over to visit their boyfriends and dance
in high shoes and perfume. Their legs are strong and
      their voices high.
And the guys get high and hard thinking about what the
      girls are like behind their eyes.

That says more about me than reality. And it's exactly
      four lines.
Ken Patchen would say his angel smells sweet and
      sassy.
I feel the bony fingers of mine who has been working to
      stay alive.

Enough small poetry. One must conceive of a project -
say a poem about a bridge - or stop writing
and instead walk over the bridge at sunset and see the
      city in a nuclear war
the clocks, the Watchtower and the docks gone and no
      smoke.

I still exist but I'm late for my job. I'm dressed well
in honor of true love and Spring which both outlast the
      holocaust.
The manager cans me with the cold hard eyes of one
      who accepts the rules entirely.

Goodbye to the rows of dead metal desks and goodbye
to those who can take it longer than I.

The guys downstairs do not read poetry and very little
      prose.
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and
      Money does not occupy their minds.
The sex pistils of the mountain daisy is no concern of
      theirs
and the man upstairs who plays the horn is less than a
      curiosity but makes more noise.

When I feel like this nothing matters and this is good -
get warm with wine, turn out the lights and turn up the
      radio -
if only there were a woman who liked the down and out
      life too.

In the end someone sticks a gun in my face in the South
      Bronx.
How I got among the fire escapes in the sooty alley
      I cannot say
but it is one of my earliest memories. Perhaps it is my
      grandmother holding my hand
or one of the clowns. I say Drop that goddamn gun and
      he blows me away.