|
|
My voice is back in da Bronx,
on Gouveneur Avenue,
it’s with the guys on the rail
by Van Cortlandt Park,
where Bronx talk was talked
for hours on end,
and went down smooth as the egg creams
at the M&M
luncheonette on Sedgwick.
These were voices that didn’t talk
about voices, or have conversations about them,
for they knew each other, these voices,
and sometimes a grunt was enough
to communicate whole thoughts, the Yankee box score, and then some,
like whether you’d be playing stickball tomorrow,
and where.
These voices didn’t travel well. They got lost.
And you know what happens when
a Bronx voice speaks and there is no Bronx ear
to hear it.
December 1997