–there once was a cop

walking the neighborhood beat from corner to corner then

back again, repeating the process through the course of his day.

I should have asked why he'd do such a thing at the time of discovery.

now it's too late.

1. 

the examinations before the investigations:

between corners there were two variety stores,

one gas station, one baseball park, a cranky junkyard,

three giant billboards, six barrooms, a hooker or two,––

three, if you count the blonde-wigged black who got pinched

five days after "Pinky" D'Ambrosio drowned at the ledge.

continuing between corners there was one terrible pond laid below

one granite-quarried ledge, three sandwich shops, two

“Progressive Clubs": (one Portuguese, one Italian) both of which

were not so different one to the other save by language, an empty

lot once used to stable four "parade" horses owned by fatso Tony Gasperini,

criticized by many on festive parade routes of sub-standard "corking",

one memorable meadow, seventeen tenement houses,

one indelible tenement, and ten thousand sweltering echoes

amid a sea of women at their machinery frantically running cloth.

me? ––well, I’m somewhere in the middle between “good for nothing”

and a meatball sandwich at the Columbus Cafe.