Kissing Peter Tork
Every once in a while, I still look at people on the street and subtract forty years, trying to unearth that summer when I was twelve; a summer that goes dormant for a time, but never disappears. Sometimes I shake my head, needing to decide whether the memory is real or a figment of my imagination; but always her face comes into focus, and I know the image is true. It was at one of those rundown rustic affairs in the Poconos that they make summer camp movies about. Once a week, every Saturday except parents’ weekend, the girls’ camp from across the lake would come to...
Read MoreBallad of the Skylight Diner
Frank O’Hara sat down in the booth at the Skylight Diner at 34th and 9th and Slid over to the wall At first I was not sure it was him, alive again After all these decades but It was, I could tell from the way The city radiated from his fingertips as he Scribbled on a pad at the lunch hour I was happy for him receiving a chance to Write the things that remained When that dune buggy ran him down on Fire Island back in ’66 Imamu Amiri Baraka joined him before the Waitress came to take down orders Baraka was still Leroi Jones When O’Hara died though...
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