Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Reading the News Where I'm Not (Poem)

Reading the News Where I'm Not

The same day rubber-band bracelets are banned
by P.S. 87 on the Upper West Side, a teen is accused
of shoplifting at Victoria's Secret. The cops find
remains of a fetus in her bag, period of gestation
unknown. Murder-milestone trend: It's going down.
Nobody murdered nobody last week. In other news,
the Court of Appeals takes up 16-ounce sugary drinks
rules — too late for the late Notorious B.I.G., too big
to have a street corner named for him. Not exactly
a role model for the neighborhoods used to taking
full-moon walks or learning in native tongues how
to play Foreign Language Hopscotch. New York City
Cares. It really does! How else to explain a Halloween
parade getting fully crowdsourced and Kickstarted?

© 2013 Maureen E. Doallas
_____________________________

This prose poem rounds up just some of a single morning's news in New York City. You can't make this stuff up! 


"Foreign Language Hopscotch", MobyLives, Melville House, October 18, 2013




"Schoool bans Rainbow Loom bracelets", New York Post, October 17, 2013


10 comments:

Peggy Rosenthal said...

What fun, Maureen. A snapshot of the human "comedy."Creating this as a PROSE poem was perfect, because the astonishing stories run together as if a single newspaper article.

Anonymous said...

NY NY ...Boston sings the same songs only in a different accent my friend.
you said it like it was and is as a poet always does..good job
stevet

brudberg said...

What a wonderful found poetry.. good and bad news.. but that foetus remains a sad reminder...

emmett wheatfall said...

A different kind of composition from you Maureen. Beautiful done and quite refreshing. Excellent work.

Kate Solo said...

Very, very nice. Intriguing. I like it! :-)

billgncs said...

the harsh truth provides us with emotion - sorrow beyond fiction.

This was a fine poem.

Mystic_Mom said...

I like this, a running list of headlines with some commentary. Cool.

Brendan said...

This poem is what' great about a big city like New York, bursting with everything awful and awesome at once! And good evidence that we poets are simply attenuated witnesses to a magnitude (stealing that comment, paraphrased somewhat, from Doctorow. Hope you've been well.

Anonymous said...

Crazy Octobers Well written and guess what there is a whole poem in your article titles, like found poem.

Margaret said...

Unique - found poetry from news articles!