by Paul Blackburn
The bricklayer tells the busdriver
and I have nothing to do but listen:
Th’ holdup at the liquor store, d’ja hear?
a detective
watch’t’m for ten minutes
He took it anyway
Got away down Broadway.
Yeah?
Yeah.
And me:
the one on the Circle?
Yeah.
Yeah? I was in there early tonight.
The continuity. A dollar forty
-two that I spent on a bottle of wine
is now in a man’s pocket going down Broadway.
Thus far the transmission is oral.
Then a cornerboy borrows my pencil
to keep track of his sale of newspapers.
From:
The New American Poetry 1945-1960, Donald Allen
Copyright ©:
University of California Press (1999)
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