Tony Iantosca
4TH AVENUE
Like the time
we were walking
on 4th avenue
and two men chased
another and threw
him against a gate
and beat him until
he bled and ripped
his shirt half off,
which was a time
that was not like
anything in the middle
of the street fleeing
and bleeding, the cars
all stopped honked and
we got on a train
right after, got off
at the beach and came close
to making love in public
like it was contagious,
other bodies in last ends
of light, sand under
the sheets. That was
something that happened,
the body’s registers
fail the event
like a hole suddenly
in the foot, a hole
the fire made, second floor
view into the living
room, the street that
flooded before I saw
the mud on everything
for the first time. Why is it
important, what blood
or mark is good
to make notes about,
this is a memory
this is another one
reading it and pointing
at something that’s me,
the length a tunnel
under the river is,
the depth that water,
getting to be a person
under it and narration
faulting the poem its
dimensions.
ACCOUNTS IN OUR HEADS
It’s the young
who run the world
now, no shut up
it’s those old people
they’re running
everything, they
control it all, keep
your mouth closed
the young rule
everything and take
away our dinner
and rob us of all
waterfalls and make
us dance like idiots
in the dying headlights
of a rent-burdened
world, but no,
I think you’re talking
about old people, their
deposit in the accounts
in our heads that go
belly up at the shore’s edge,
they ruined it, they’re old,
look around, the vending
machines are lies they told
and this side
of the nuclear baby gate
there’s a twitching leg
and some medication—
the pharmacy called
you have to pick it up
before they close—I know
who I’m talking about
I know what I mean,
but no, you’re still wrong
there are young people
everywhere making us
deaf with their fun
let’s blame them for it
let’s slap them in their faces,
those young, I mean
look how they look at us,
there the window opens,
gives us a stream nobody alive
ever lived through and look
there, the young people
think they’re saving the world
without us. Look there,
the dumb old people are
young and angry again
like those idiot old people
always asking for directions
with the senile smiles
those young people wear.
Tony Iantosca is a writer, poet and educator living in Brooklyn, NY. His poetry can be found in a Glimpse Of, Hurricane Review, Milk Press, as well as in his three poetry collections: Crisis Inquiry (Ugly Duckling Presse 2023), To the Attic (Spuyten Duyvil 2020), and Shut-up, Leaves (United Artists Books 2015). He works as an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Kingsborough Community College.