ALEX

Alex brought a stray pigeon into his seaside window

When a gale trapped it in his wrought iron gate

As November held it captive;

One hundred feet above his blowing checkered curtain…

It was as homeless as he felt he’d always been

When the father, he had never known, took flight in

Puerto Rico ,

And left his mother all alone to carry him to Coney Island …

Many like him coveted secret thoughts of flying

Or jumping out;

Fearful of he claustrophic stairwells, where eerie

Razor bladed dealers and snarling dogs

Waited for the sound of sneaker steps

Of those they knew never would belong…

His mother agonized about the lice, jumping off the chairs

And couch,

And finally led him to the madness of snapping off the pigeons neck…

He took in an uneutered cat,

Teaching it to use a litter box,

While it curled upon his mother’s lap

And pawed inside the cabinets at night

And open pipes where mice gnawed into the smallest spaces…

I think that Alex always missed his pigeon

And kept the cat to give his sickly mother

A reason to live on…

He knew the cat would eat the bird,

But always wished to have both of them live together in his flat;

One to scale the project’s skies

And one to keep his mother alive.