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There are no diners in SoHo
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I wandered slim streets past pizza parlors and pretentious galleries,
and all I wanted was a burger for my belly.
I hadn't walked that area too many times before, but once I went looking for an apartment
for my possessions, mostly manuscripts and dead poems that once sang across the page.
Bookshelves and bookcases--and a small bed where I might rest my head!
A real estate broker named Todd took me through a smathering of shoebox studios
which I can’t qualify as apartments, although each was renting for a grand,
but I had nothing close to that and for an apartment too small for my books.
So, I walked streets with real names and no numbers, staring inside forbidden foyers
of modern and contemporary art galleries with ugly paintings, pretty people,
then the nervous men in black turtlenecks sweeping floors and smoking cigarettes.
The night was early, and I had bought my supplies for the year to come.
Looking through my pockets I found 3 dollars 58 cents,
a no-good Visa Card maxed to its limit on pens and paper.
A fragrant vision of a juicy burger arrived outside Kate’s Papery.
I was sure a diner was on the next corner of West Broadway,
but only there was pizza, so I wondered inside for a slice of pie, but it was no burger
...because their are no diners in SoHo.
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March 17, 1998
--Richard Aaron
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