Linda Lerner

The Crossroads   

I think of it now as the old city
glimpsed thru cracks
the way an old self sometimes
breaks thru without warning
brought back by those
painted naked ladies buying what
people want them to sell 
pretending they don’t; sometimes
I imagine what it would be like
to sneak back there, be one of them
be who I was for a while
disobedient always in trouble who
didn’t fit in and didn’t pretend to
if I could be that naked-alive again
needs to learn the hard way someone once said…
pushing my way through crowds down streets whose
stores brag name brands and the latest technology,
spot Elmo and the cookie monster
looking like cartoons of outlaws
Columbia university street wannabes
once studied mentored by Herbert Hunke 
hitting up a group of tourists
in a cash for photo hustle
something must be done about this
a voice cries out rushing by, and
oh look, there’s one of those ladies
heads turning to catch a quick look
fast as it once took to snatch
a gold chain from someone’s neck
to take back home with them

 

Linda Lerner’s A Dance Around the Cauldron is a prose work which takes place during the Salem witch trials (Lummox Press, 2017.) Recent publications / acceptances include Café Review, Trailer Park Quarterly, Wilderness Literary Review, Maintenant, Cape Rock, Illumination Magazine. Taking the F Train, forthcoming by NYQ books in 2019.