|poem| Hand to Mouth

  • This isn’t New York
  • The city sleeps tonight
  • There are a handful of people awake —
  • Emergency medical, police, 24 hour convenience,
  • Stragglers down the street to nowhere
  • But it is the stragglers who interest us the most
  • They stumble occasionally with hooded eyes
  • Going nowhere, coming from nowhere
  • What is pounding in their hearts, what message?
  • It must be fearsome being one of the stragglers
  • Gone are the certainties of homely middle-class life
  • Now rising up like a wall are the new realities
  • Not enough money
  • Need for some liquid sustenance
  • A longing for companionship
  • The straggler walks alone tonight

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