The Literary Review

On Second Avenue was a restaurant that served chocolate

in lava-like sauces, tiny dots or chunks.  My son and I ate

salads and burgers, various states of chocolate for dessert

to celebrate an eighth-grade science project, a model train

with solar panel, now long derailed like the shop itself.

Afterwards, a Starbucks with comfy chairs moved in.

In 2016, I sat and looked for work with my laptop.

After 21 years, I’d been let go. Veiny hands betrayed age.

Latte after latte I drank as the resumes flew out by email

for all those jobs I’d have to take but would not love.

The furniture store supplied my rickety rolltop desk,

with drawers and shelves that are now cracked and creaking.

A bulky wooden object to populate the aging rooms.

It was replaced by a makeup shop, pretty but not practical.

Then, Taco Bell appeared with constant fluorescent lights.

The M2M market that sold sushi on the corner is gone too.

Today, all my fish is cooked, as are my job prospects.

Only contract work is offered. Eighteen months and out.

The building upstairs was demolished and rebuilt,

tenants evicted overnight. Now its bare rooms are all ablaze.

The used bookstores on Fourth Avenue have all shut down,

except the Strand, which is surrounded by doorman buildings.

Rent is too high. I don’t run into other poets in the streets now.

Not on Fourth Avenue or even Avenue A. No more books.

Perhaps at a garden reading near Avenue C, by a lost bodega.

Yes, I could leave. But a trailer park in Jersey isn’t desirable.

Taco Bells are everywhere. It’s the terrain of McDonald’s,

of lighted signs that jump out at night, blinding me to the road.

It’s just that the neighborhood of Ukrainian food and tiny shops,

the place I’ve lived so long, that I’ve loved, is leaving me.