Portable

June 24, 2020

sun shines through the window,
j train rolls through brooklyn,
a mid-thirties tries to
sleep through her commute,
but i don’t let
her. my baby blue olivetti
punches punch-punch
punch-punch punches
poems
through dark black
ribbon onto the page.

a tall, dark-haired man once
tore a sheet out of my typewriter
at six-thirty a.m. before the
stop at broad street,
he said,

“your writing sucks
and
you’re loud as fuck.”

he had been looking over my shoulder
during the train ride as
i wrote a much necessary
letter to a friend, not a poem
but so be it, every writer
is judged by their least work,
yes?

another time, a young journalist
woman with short black
hair and eyes like needles threw
a notebook at me, as if i
didn’t know a notebook was
an option.

ya know,
i’ve been thinking:
maybe i’ll buy a small
portable computer instead of
lugging around my
baby blue olivetti,
or maybe i’ll buy a
bentley and a
chauffer when one of these
poems becomes
immortal.