Grandfather City Poems

The days are long and painful
The nights are long and bare
Those alleys, hard and brutal
Between buildings built with care

Springtime held a promise
Its lilac on the...

Read More

Her teeth are no longer white
and bright as in 1960s
when she first fell in love with my grandfather.
I blame that BB, because she always has...

Read More

Looking back, one thing comes clean-glass clear
you were always there for me subduing every fear.

I tried to do my duty, be a husband strong and...

Read More

Of Civilization and Disenchantment
by Michael R. Burch

Suddenly uncomfortable
to stay at my grandfather's house ?
actually his third new wife's,
in her daughter's bedroom
? one interminable summer
with nothing...

Read More

I am from spaghetti
from tomato pie and pigs feet dipped in sause

I am from mt Italian neighborhood
(treeless city streets.

I am from my grandfather's house
who I...

Read More

Telling "White Lies"

My mother got born November
thirteenth, nineteen hundred thirty five
within poverty stricken household
of Canarsie, Brooklyn, the youngest
(most mollycoddled) of four siblings,

experienced grinding poverty, no
matter...

Read More

God does time fly!

Psalms allm ssllaay yyai!

Doesn't it seem as if we have never been?

There was now another thing accepting us?

Like we were fluids?

Drunken fluids...

Read More

 
Outside the city where the pomegranates grew,
Still the broken down farm of my grandfather dwells.
I recall the bright red against a sky of blue,
And...

Read More