Love Song for Alphabet City

by Misa Levey

Let’s jump on the back of an eastside rat 
and dash into a flashy Friday night street, 

Sync to the thump of playground drums, 
and side-step the heels of the restive young, 

Let’s barrel through the unworkably dressed underground scene, 
glide by a Formica diner with plump late-night pierogis,

Dance with the dancers dancing trance-like on a dismal 
sidewalk stage, eulogizing yet another blessed dance club shuttered,

Let’s scurry past an innocent fraught-over fruit-bearing garden, 
dart across a just-darkened park,

Climb a police-blue ladder to the second-floor landing of a squat, 
where a poet, a trumpeter, and a plumber debate meditation.

Once on the roof, let’s grab onto the dusty wing of a dodgy pigeon—
Mind the hawk! and circle a 10-story brick-and-lime tenement 
to hover above a renegade alphabet square 

Where tents once bloomed but were battered down with batons   
Where protest songs ricocheted off a tattooed bandshell
Where dogs go to buy drugs, 
Where pawns and bishops meet for drinks
Where panhandlers fall in love—     

And let’s never leave.  

---

Misa Levey (pronounced like “Grease a Chevy”) is a New York City poet, parent, and PhD dropout. Her poetry has appeared in various anthologies, and other work includes forged notes, rhymes for rap battles, cocktail menus, micro-fiction, and humorous greeting cards. Her first chapbook, I DON’T WANT TO, was published in 2022 by Iniquity Press/Vendetta Books.