“The Streets Are Clogged,” a poem by Seth King

The streets are clogged

with heat and horns

the crash of sliding metal gates

sidewalk steams where it’s been hosed

in the paper

I search for mention of people I used to know

the sun bakes my face

as a bicycle swerves

to meet an SUV

the rider his red shirt balloon

swirls around his pale

inverted he takes a pause

in front of the city as it stands

balanced on rusting iron under-funding

in front of painted fiberglass rolling down

the avenue in front of an American flag

outside the second floor window of the Bella Nail Salon

in front of a cobalt sky this sky this guy

slams down on the hood

then rolls to the street taka taka

taka the driver of the SUV gets out

forehead wrinkled above aviators

a crowd gathers croaking and pointing

hopping up and down with rolling eyes

spittle flying from their lips

at the promise of further violence I see

an ancient woman brown parchment dragging

a plastic womb of bottles and cans

stops to stare at me with toothless smile

before her tongue slips from her mouth

like an eel.

Seth King

Born in Philly, I wrote and read poetry in the late 1980’s and early 90’s in New York, published in local zines and my own, an audio magazine called “A Sheep on the Bus,” until I got sidetracked by a small film and video production company that I created with my wife in 1995.

My midlife crisis began in earnest in 2010. One of the symptoms was an urge to write again. I worked on a novel until I realized that nobody could get past page 60, there was no story arc, or maybe no story at all. I began to break the novel up into smaller stories, then break those down, until I was left with about ten poems. That was May of 2015. I’ve been sitting down to write nearly every day since.

I live with my wife, two kids, two cats, five cichlid fish in an aquarium sized apartment above a store in Brooklyn.