Morningside Heights
A shirtless ode sweats hot verse, pulses words,
wrings them like lime, into this open mouth.
A silver hymn, beaded with prayers, hangs
like its Christ from the rearview mirror.
Past Riverside a saline epic shifts, cradling blue
crabs and bass, propelling sewage and plankton.
Crying over the baseball field, newborn graffiti
poetically claims cliffed Manhattan schist.
On one-tenth the root of a Siberian carpe diem
tips my toes and carries cobblestone;
and London haiku, green from eating pollution,
peel brown bark to bare white within.
A stunted doggerel breaks bricks on College
Walk, tricks and trips, sucks in stilettos.
A fossilized elegy, each tentacle a series
of circles, ages in the limestone wall.
A shirtless ode sweats hot verse, pulses words,
wrings them like lime, into this open mouth.
A silver hymn, beaded with prayers, hangs
like its Christ from the rearview mirror.
Past Riverside a saline epic shifts, cradling blue
crabs and bass, propelling sewage and plankton.
Crying over the baseball field, newborn graffiti
poetically claims cliffed Manhattan schist.
On one-tenth the root of a Siberian carpe diem
tips my toes and carries cobblestone;
and London haiku, green from eating pollution,
peel brown bark to bare white within.
A stunted doggerel breaks bricks on College
Walk, tricks and trips, sucks in stilettos.
A fossilized elegy, each tentacle a series
of circles, ages in the limestone wall.
Copyright ©Xiomara A. Maldonado 2008
