Coenties Alley, July 2008

The clouds were moving
quickly overhead
across the Hudson
and onto Long Island,
the sun was on my face
and I looked across Pearl
at men with cell phones
and women with blackberries
everyone with their heads down
headphones in their ears
covering up the noise of cars, subway trains, helicopters,
beautiful women crossed the street
waiting for taxis to pass,
stepping out into the patched asphalt,
heels clicking on the blacktop,
hands low clutching their skirts,

I peeled and ate a banana I bought from a
street vendor 2 blocks away
I had taken it off a pile of them and given him a dollar
but he didn't have change and he told me I could take
three
and I said to keep the other two and give them to the most beautiful girls
he saw pass by,
the banana was perfect,
the skin yellow in the sunlight
a sticker on it said it was from Colombia,
up the Atlantic and through the busiest
waterways in the world it had traveled,
through stevedores and customs officials
and truckers and wholesalers and warehouses
to a dirty street corner to sit in a box watched by a dirty man.
Thirty five cents: Imagine that!