YOUNG CITY STEEL

Carl Annarummo

Sometimes poems are the poor lighting and littered floors of a laundromat on an avenue of forceps born on poles by two dudes. Other times they are flights of stairs on Lexington or mere brahamins known as equestrian cogs parading through laundromats on generic trojan horses filled with aluminum cans. If you are prone to abusing alcohol, typically your poems will be printhead coifeuses whelmed by the turnstiles of form rejection letters. Some will enlighten freshmen enough to move in with mongers. I remember my first writing assignment. We had a bible and a rented room decorated with these dirt-bag moustaches just to the right of the doorstep. They watched us write through the peeled paint on the windows. Suckers from the bluegrass sluiced gold from sediment in the bathroom. You could sleep with the door open there. And to think the archdioces had the same archaic floorboards in his rich bastion midtown loft with front door all covered in slide locks. And he’s the closest thing to a pope! You look at someone funny down there and you get shot. Not enough people get shot in poems these days.