Welcome to New York Entrepreneurism
Hazo, Samuel
Samuel Hazo Welcome to New York My sparrow preens in a fountain pool that mirrors the World Trade Center upside down. She fluffs and shudders dry like a dog after a dousing. What's a sparrow...
...Since no one notices what's small unless it turns into a threat, Gullivers stroll by and overlook my sparrow...
...Since smoking is forbidden in New York except in "designated areas," I greet my fellow outcast in the free and unforbidden air...
...Like all the lilliputians of this world she struts her two cents' worth of insignificance and wants no more than to be seen...
...And there we stay, undesignated as we are...
...What's a sparrow or its fall to world trade...
...I've come out there to smoke my pipe...
...On a scale of one to ten she fails to quantify...
...Banished from Eden to a concrete park, we're seen as two of a dangerous type-Eve on a spree with her little Big Apple, Adam at peace with his pipe...
...She pecks a battered apple scattered near a bench I've commandeered...
...July 2001 Entrepreneurism In just one year we've traveled from the flying now of faxes, memoranda, jiffy notes- clouds of spume the color of gun-metal and swirled to the sun in volleys of smoke- cartwheeling bodies flailing by sealed or shattered windows to flattening, smattering rest- a mayor masked on scene but busily a mayor-firefighters by the hundreds shouldering flattened hoses coiled like bandoleers-policemen with sooted lips and foreheads- funerals for thousands crushed to sift-re-runs of tons of aircraft penetrating steel and glass until the targets buckled slowly to their knees like bison gutshot as they stood- to something excavated like an open grave, then "Patriotic Travel Mugs" and "God-Bless-America Hotel Discounts" and "NYPD Authentic Caps" and "Lapel Flags Priced from $9.99 to $99.99 with Genuine Diamond Settings...
Vol. 130 • April 2003 • No. 8
