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Scars Publications

Audio/Video chapbooks cc&d magazine Down in the Dirt magazine books

 

at a red light

Rocco de Giacomo

two skinny boys
huddled on a scooter
in navy blue
school blazers and
white shoes
and
gray flanel pants
that flap
as they
pull the corner
and whir through a space
between the crowd
at the crosswalk
and a one hundred ton
yellow crane
swinging
into the
intersection
on wheels the size of small cars
a soldier
green overcoat and face
long and lean with shadow
moves to the middle
of the road
as the traffic
from the small
artery descends
like a minor avalanche:

dented four door sedans
little blue pickups
loaded with fruit
and furniture,
old bike couriers
wrapped in
imitation leather
humming on harley davidson look-a-likes
young bike couriers
jacked up on
crotch-rockets,
blaring stereos duct-taped
to the fuel tanks,
cigarettes poking over the
rim of their cloth masks as they
carry empty propane canisters
and 5 gallon drums of petrol
red nozzles
sticking up over their shoulders
like the handles
of swords,

dilivery men,
their little vespas shaking
like tired mules
loaded with lettuce
and bags of rice,
faces weighed down
with roadwork
and the want
of a single cigarette,
and
the buses:
588
303
129
588-1
1000
327
22
68
588-2
the buses
hurdle through the light
shaking off their tons as they pass
and I
sit pretty
on my 50 cc scooter

at
least
until
the light turns
and I am blocked
by a last second
load of bananas.
a bus
a 303 or a 129
gets a head start
and rumbles like a
heavy door
through a hole
in the intersection
almost cutting me off
from my space between
its front bumper
and a
parked car

but then

everything stops
held up
blocked
buy a wagon load
of flattened cardboard
pulled by a pair of legs
older than any street
in the
neighbourhood



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