St. Adrian's, 1971
Saloon
Squeezed between office buildings
On lower Broadway
Desolate and out of the way
Faint neon sign marks the place
For the downtown art scene.
Poetry readings on Sunday afternoons
Only the regulars show up
Invited or not
Some mount the stage and
Recite a piece or two
To scattered applause.
The beat goes on
Summer nights fly by
No Sunday readings now
It’s Saturday and it’s a different place.
Crowd mingles
Three deep at the bar
A/C working on overtime while
Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On plays
Jazzy and soulful
A monster hit
To no one’s surprise.
A hangout for anyone
Bodies waiting to meet
An Agent.
Or maybe a Publisher.
Or a Rep.
Anybody. Somebody. Anyone know somebody important?
Naw, this ain’t the place
This is St. Adrian’s
A place for
Artists.
Writers.
Sculptors.
Working class dreamers.
Pretenders and losers.
Wannabes.
Lost children and
Casual loners on the prowl.
Carol, alone in a corner booth
Glass of white wine in her hands
On the rocks of course
Smiles at everyone like a Mona Lisa.
Jack Micheline
Bronx’ original Beat
Wrote River of Red Wine in ‘58
Manuscript under his arm
Waits for someone
To buy him a drink
Elaine, beautiful in a peasant blouse
Scent of musk oil like a halo
Motions
To the young men
Who watch her hands
Move like deadly weapons
Stan’s a photographer. Sleepy, one night
Left his equipment in a car
Morning arrives and
Broken windshield screams
You’ve been robbed.
Junior, a sculptor, needs rent money for a walkup in the East Village
Otherwise he’ll live on someone’s couch
Gil does commercials
Until he finds an old lady
Then Hollywood here he comes
And Glenn is a writer with lots of ideas
But no paper and no place to go.
No one asked what I did for money
Or where I lived.
I was accepted with a simple sitdownhaveadrink.
Sometimes there’d be ten of us
Squeezed in a booth or
Around a table
Talking and talking.
Any topic not important
Just to meet and forget for awhile
The nagging loneliness and rejection.
It’s well past midnight
Chairs scrape the floor and there’s an echo in the walls
Left behind are empty glasses and stale beer
As the place begins to empty out.
We leave
Hitting the still streets
Looking for a cab
Or the nearest subway
But before we do
We promise to meet again.
Copyright © Edmund Siejka | Year Posted 2009
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