City Lights
Driving to California seemed
the only way to buy Jeffers
and once in hand, I heard the
same ticking a fraud does
I kept my eyes from the
yellowed history on those walls;
the framed shrines of old ink
reiterated that I was a 5-day vacationer
But Ash, next to the Poet’s Chair, said,
“You should sit here. I’m not allowed.”
The rocker sighed warmly
in an upstairs room, too silent
Out the adjacent window,
in the foreground against glass towers,
a brick tenement neighbor with windows
festooned with weekday laundry
10 or more white t-shirts slung
on wire hangers,
threaded on a line, ascendent and
to my eye, pointed toward something
Chris Middleman grew up in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, lived for years in Boston and now lives, works and writes in Seattle. His poems have appeared in New York Quarterly, Ampersand Review, Boston Literary Magazine and Underground Voices, among others.
