-if you went to the little store-

If you went to the little store

the one on the corner

the one painted red with bigger

street-side windows than you have in your house,

the store where the sign reading "Cigarettes"
with a big, tubular, filter-tipped beauty

burning from its head a veil of seductive

smoke, pure blue-white, coiling upward

intrigued every time;

the store where one day the kid from 1026 Stinziano

crossed the street from the park to ask

old man Schnozzola if he could use the toilet and was told:

"Go piss behind the billboards like everybody else"!—

the store where the scent of fatty cold-cut meats

and vinegar permeated the air where the flies
last landings were preserved on the entrails
of a more contemporary application in amber
and compartments gleaming with packs of fresh Lucky Strike,

longed to link-up with the fatal passions of your father;

"he said he'll pay you next week"—

but you're far too busy with the goings on

of your daily requirements with no time allotted to consider
such encounters in triviality as in once, "going to the little store"—

well, this poem is not for you.

                                                       Quequechan