In a dark, dirty, dangerous neighborhood, at a late 50’s New York
New Year’s party we’d crashed at an Avenue B walk-up
wall-to-wall with strangers, my Italian companion whispered “Corso”
and nodded through the crowd at a short nude man pissing in the fireplace.
Could that be true? Were there working fireplaces in those tenements?
I remember flames. Ginsberg must have lounged on the crowded couch
as we edged toward the kitchen counter lined with bottles.
(Ellen La Forge Memorial Poetry Foundation: honorable mention)