After O’Hara

I get off the 7 and head home, past the Chase and the Jackson Heights
penguin that, last week, someone dressed as a bunny, and I’m thinking
of Frankie’s I-do-this-I-do-that poems, and my phone is dead again
and I can’t afford to replace it. All I want to hear is Spoon
singing got no regard for the things you don’t understand
but maybe, as Lorna said, it’s a gift and there’s a poem across the street
waving Yoo hoo! Over here! and trying very hard to get
my attention. I get onto 37th, near what’s left of the Brunson Building
after the fire on Easter Monday and I head past the Met (not that one)
which they renamed Foodtown but which Honor and Joe and I
will always call the Met (not that one), and then a left onto 77th
and past our coffee shop where Afsal stands outside, talking,
but for once does not say hello even though he looks
straight at me, and it’s fine, I walk past the Berkeley and over 35th Ave.,
and I guess I’m home, considering that my keys have opened
the door even before I realized I had them in my hand, and everything
is where I left it, even in the bedroom where I keep waking alone quite
suddenly to find — yes, I left you. You’ve never even been here.

We Call Them Beautiful (Diode Editions, 2019)

Off the Roosie by KC Trommer

Author of the debut poetry collection We Call Them Beautiful (Diode Editions, 2019)
https://www.diodeeditions.com/product-page/we-call-them-beautiful | 

Founder of QUEENSBOUND: www.queensbound.com

Recordings of my published poems and recordings of the work of poets I admire.