V

Verdi Square

by Tim Tomlinson

I’m on the sidewalk opposite
Verdi Square kissing a married woman
passionately and thinking oh my god
you fool what are you doing
                                             because

we’re right in front of Gray’s Papaya
where this great short story about a guy
falling for a peculiar woman takes place
and of course leads to disaster—
                                                     for the guy.

But this married woman I’m kissing
down to her tonsils: she’s from The Bronx,
she pretends she’s French and that reminds me
of my Aunt Antoinette especially
                                                     the way she talks.

Antoinette married a New York City cop
who in the midst of some scandal blew
                                                     out his own brains.

Photo by Samantha Green on Unsplash

Tim Tomlinson

Tim Tomlinson is the author of the chapbook Yolanda: An Oral History in Verse, the poetry collection, Requiem for the Tree Fort I Set on Fire, and the short story collection, This Is Not Happening to You. Recent work appears in Live Encounters, Men Matters Online Journal, Tin Can Literary Review, and the anthology, Surviving Suicide: A Collection of Poems that May Save a Life. A new collection, Listening to Fish: meditations from the wet world, will appear on Nirala books later this year. Tim is the director of New York Writers Workshop, and co-author of its popular text, The Portable MFA in Creative Writing. He teaches writing in NYU’s Global Liberal Studies.