For My Sins I Live in Milwaukee

                                         For my sins I live in the city of New York
                                                                                Ted Berrigan, "Whitman in Black"

City of empty night buses,
city of wheelchair rapists,
city of drunk postmidnight Catholic rectory parties,
city where more people die of poetry
         than drive by shootings.
City that dumps millions of gallons of
         sewage into lake Michigan,
city of swans and swastikas.
City of baronial mansions & inner cities
         & inner cities' onner cities' cities,
city where a playground covers Jeffrey Dahmer's
         ghosted apartment building,
city of factory ghosts, brewery ghosts,
         socialist party ghosts.
City of blackboard night skies.
City of movie palaces, copper-domed basilica, corner bars,
         ships, fog horns, and church bells.
City where in night lake winds you hear
old nuns crying for their stolen wimples.
        


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