What it is

June 2010: In a desperate attempt to stave off senility, the monkey began writing a poem a day. By summer's end he'd begun to run out of versified political rants and philosophical bloviations. Then he hit on the improbable idea of writing micro fiction in the form of Elizabethan sonnets. Eureka. The birth of the "Sonnets From Other Lives" series. Two hundred plus lives later, he's still at it.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

4
Sonnets From Other Lives: Abel

I am hailed at midtown. My first trip
today-- an older man bound for the east side.
who pays with squared-off blue-nailed fingertips.
Congenital heart defect. My next ride
is a yellow tinged cirrhotic alcoholic.
Today I think it will be getting hot.
A New York summer can make me nostalgic
for Harare’s steamy chaos, but I'm not
so welcome in Mugabe's paradise.
A white man in a wheelchair hails me. Says,
--Thanks. Six other cabs just drove on by.
The Avenue of the Americas...
I wonder what diagnosis best fits me--
Physician? Chauffeur? Exile? Refugee?
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1 comment:

  1. Patricia LichenJuly 18, 2011 at 8:08 PM

    Damn, man. You continue to astound. I love it when I don't really understand the story until the last line...

    ReplyDelete

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