Enter the City

Three Poems by Shontay Luna

Weekend in NOLO (sometime in twenty thirteen)

He signed up for one of those time-shares
presentation deals at the mall without my knowledge.
Under a big sign that said “Free Weekend in (insert any
city name here). Includes three-day stay at such-and-such
hotel, just fulfill attendance presentation requirement.
Of course, they tell you that afterwards. It was cool riding
down a freeway I’d never seen before, developing a new
affinity for the number “ten”. We were within walking
distance of the French Quarter with its multitude of
bric-a-brac stands and shops. Open air bars
beckoning us in and disposing massively
inebriated tourists back onto the street at 12:30 in
the afternoon. My only regret at the time was that
I considered it too early to drink. From there we
went to the seafood place recommended by a
local at the meeting where there was a bit
of a wait but the food was fantastic.
During which I got to see a bonafide, second
line parade. The happy couple strutting
behind the brass band, followed by the
attendees. Sound filled the street outside.
It was normal and slow motion both at
once.

Afterwards, we walked along the streets
whose shores kissed the edge of the
Mississippi. Picked up a card from a
coin-operated fortune teller. Can’t remember
what the fortune said, but it was good
(I believe they always are) and I kept it for
many years. And the time flew. Before I knew
it, the weekend was over. As we hit the road
toward home, I made a promise to myself to
one day, return to New Orleans. When I had
just a little more time in my pocket.

My Return to NOLO, Part Two (January 6-8th, 2023)

I made it back to NOLO, several years after my initial visit.
Hotel room absolutely lovely; with its kitchenette and extra
bed that I didn’t need. Maybe I was so excited to go, I forgot
to order a single bedroom. View was of other windows, but if
I looked to the right, I could see the Jackson Avenue traffic
bustling under a sky tinged in amber sunsets. My, how those
streets called themselves to me as I walked the nearest ones.
getting a latte and chocolate croissant a block away, staring
at both the streetcars and palm trees in absolute wonder.
When I found Canal Street, my prior recollections came to life.
Returning back to me fully in real time, I remembered. Even
though I was still heady from both the travel high and densely
erotic dreams in the early morning hours as my eyes witnessed
both a sea of stars and fleur-de-lis.

The possibilities are endless for I am “home” in a place
I wasn’t born in, but my people were. Albeit two and a half
hours away. And somehow, the city knows it as I feel its
embrace around me.

This trip a complete contrast to the one before. Yet,
it doesn’t phase me at all. Because there’s something
different here about the Sun and sky; the vibe so
distinct. Maybe it calls to me because it’s the land
of my mother’s people, the land of my Great –
Grandparents. Maybe it just wants me, period.
I don’t know why it feels like this – I’m just glad
that it does.

Back to the palm trees – yes, the palm trees. Being from
Chicago, I find them fascinating. I stare at them
helplessly upon my outings, in awe of the varying
heights and the unrelenting casualness they
embody.

Return to NOLO, Part Three

Travelling completes the soul. That’s the only way
I can explain it. I once had a co-worker that had
several tattoos. Every time I’d see her, she’d show
me her newest tat while excitedly talking about the
next one she’d get. I’ve realized how she felt about
tattoos, I feel about travel. As I sit here in the
airport terminal, all I can think about is where my
next trip will take me. The thought leaving me
excited, breathless and grateful as this last trip
was years in the making and sorely needed.

As it was winter, I didn’t smell magnolia in the
breezes, but I felt the ragtime rumble itself
through me in an off street by the French Market. I
traipsed on cobblestone streets among buildings
brocaded in metal flowers and secrets.

Canal Street crept quietly into my memories,
with its broad width and sun setting horizon.
The ancient souvenir shop I frequented
the first time still standing on the corner.
The large white sign with black letters, an
antique in the digital age. Now flooded by
several CBD shops that, of course, weren’t
there in years past.

I forgot to return to Duke’s for the seafood,
but I did go to Cafe Du Monde and
The Court of the Two Sisters Buffet.
Flavors staying with me long after
delicacies were consumed. As the titles
ingrained themselves in my memory –
Red Beans, Shrimp Etouffee, Gumbo,
Jambalaya. And I’m left with two
certainties: New Orleans calls me like
no other city ever has and I will definitely
return.

Chicagoan Shontay Luna is a poet, blogger and fanfiction author. Her work first appeared in Anthology and Capper’s and her most recent appearances include The Crucible, Press II Press and Blue Lake Review. Her newest book is ‘The Goddess Journal – a tool for unlocking the Goddess within every Woman.’

“Alphabet City” by John Repp

I’d walked the length of Murray Avenue many times
& strode up or down Forbes disdaining bus exhaust & rain,
stopping on the public course’s first tee to marvel at the lights,
an industrial tang suffusing the Pittsburgh air then, Flagstaff Hill behind
or just ahead, depending, but this was the far-downtown bedlam
of Manhattan, where I couldn’t help thinking myself
one of Whitman’s roughs while seventeen times a block
being revealed as a permanent rube. My new wife motored

down the sidewalk when one existed & zoomed faster
when all we had was asphalt or plywood-roofed scaffolding.
The noise obliterated metaphor. To keep pace, I imagined myself
Frank O’Hara & patted my pocket notebook. She yelled when I stopped
to answer the first few nut jobs ranting at my helicopter & gold bullion.
At the red light, she said, “You’ll never get anywhere like that.”

John Repp is a writer, folk photographer, and digital collagist living in Erie, Pennsylvania. His most recent collection of poetry is Never Far from the Egg Harbor Ice House, published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. Scads more information about Repp, his work, and his interests/obsessions can be found on his website: http://www.johnreppwriter.com

“Under a Verdigris Streetlamp” by Sara Backer

Please note: Poetry is compressed to fit smart phone screens. If you are reading this poem on a phone screen, please turn your screen sideways to make sure that you are seeing correct line breaks for the poem.

Paris Street; Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte

“Like real weather atomized”—Ciaran Carson

Caillebotte’s pale clouds fight to hold back
the sun, rain pooling between worn cobblestones, a shimmering
veneer, flatiron buildings nosing into a five-point intersection.
When I went to Paris, neon lit a dark sky. Cobblestones now paved.
Wheezing buses blocked my view. Caillebotte’s streets have no cars.
Pedestrians space themselves, walking in all directions, holding identical
umbrellas, large and curved, the color of sealskin. The closest couple
turn their placid eyes to look at something beyond the edge
of the canvas. The man wears a top hat and bow tie. His wife
wears diamond earrings and a fur-collared coat. She holds his arm
that carries their umbrella high. Brick walls, muted ochre, could be gold
with a bit more optimism, sluiced in the mesh-like rain.
My December was chilled by drizzle, no coffee or brandy capable
of even transient warmth, and I, who cherished solitude, wished
I had someone to joke about conformity or bourgeoisie. I rode
the warm subways so often I memorized metro maps.
At Gare Saint-Lazare, a couple asked me how to get to Opera.
I understood their question, told them in French how to get there.
My sudden competence thrilled me! The husband frowned
and murmured, elle n’est pas francais. They asked a young man
the same question and he repeated my answer. Suddenly sick
of rain and trains and tiny cheese sandwiches,
that evening I left for Italy.

Sara Backer’s first book of poetry, Such Luck, follows two chapbooks: Scavenger Hunt, and Bicycle Lotus, which won the Turtle Island Chapbook Award. Recent publications include Lake Effect, Slant, CutBank Online, Poetry Northwest, Poetry Ireland, and Kenyon Review. She lives in New Hampshire and is currently writing novels.

“The Eagle and Mrs. B.” by Linda Romanowski

Many a Philadelphia area college student spent those post-Thanksgiving/Pre-Christmas days working at one of the “Big Three” department stores in Center City: Strawbridge & Clothier, Lit Brothers, or John Wanamaker’s. Due to my mother’s influence, I thought working at Wanamaker’s was the best of all worlds. After all, who could resist the classy interior and exterior window displays, the jagged mountain range stroke of the owner’s signature on the side of the building, and the transportation proximity?

Two other striking figures claimed the store’s signature distinction: the Wanamaker eagle and the annual Christmas fountain and light show. The serene and imposing gilded bronze aviary statue was the focal point for gathering, for claiming  “lost parents,” and for bon voyages until next time.

Lifting one’s eyes to the sights, sounds, and waving fountain streams of the hourly Christmas performance stopped shoppers in their tracks and delighted the minds of wide-eyed youngsters who rarely cried during those few minutes of awe. My first recollection of seeing the aqua wonder made me fearful, thinking at any moment, the fountains would fall from their upper stage perch and drown the audience below, extinguishing the prancing lights in the process.

Not every pair of eyes welcomed this holiday diversion. My first Christmas working season in the children’s department in 1972 provided a novel view of the saleswomen employed at the makeup counters. The daily music grinding of “Frosty the Snowman” did nothing for their business. No cash registers rung in harmony with “O, Christmas Tree.” Gazers leaned on their pristine cosmetic display cases; their backs turned away from the porcelain faces of Estee Lauderettes, who resorted to makeup remover to erase the handprints and elbow marks on their precious encasements of promised beauty and glamour. No allure of scented bottled blossoms could overpower the lofty sounds and scenery above the audience. It must have been the bane of their existence, their dreams of pocket money ruined by lit-up distraction. One year, I counted viewing thirty-six performances of Rudolph’s very shiny unpowdered nose glowing across the ceiling.

*****

Every college student on Wanamaker’s holiday payroll hoped to work for the main floor supervisor, Mrs. B., known for her kindness. She was a smartly dressed, middle-aged Jewish lady, brownish-black hair coiffed to perfection, with no-nonsense eyeglasses attached to a pearl chain that hung elegantly around her neck. Her high-heeled pumps that coordinated with every outfit gave her an acceptable height, appearing taller than she was. Her trim figure clicked in tandem with her stride. Mrs. B. took the time to acquaint herself with several of us. One afternoon, during the height of the Christmas rush, she announced that she would retain us for the week after Christmas. We were delighted, as it meant money for next semester’s textbooks would be less of an issue. All we needed to do was follow her instructions without variation.

When we punched in on the time clock on December 26th, Mrs. B. led us to an unfamiliar store area, one at a time. We were placed separately in obscure areas of dressing rooms and stock areas, out of the view of the “suits” who might sniff through the aisles looking for post-holiday imperfections. There were close calls, but none of us were spotted. Had we been “caught,” we would say we were Christmas shopping to maintain our ruse. During that week, Mrs. B. was ubiquitous, her eagle eyes surpassing that stony sculpture’s glance on the first floor. We functioned seamlessly as the suits paraded the aisles, praising Mrs. B. for her diligence and attention to detail. I’ll always wonder if the Wanamaker eagle suspected her and kept the secret, among all the others, under its ornate-clad feathers.

Linda M. Romanowski is a graduate of Rosemont College, in 1975 with a BA in Psychology and Elementary Education, and this past May as an MFA graduate in Creative Non-fiction. She was assistant editor of Non-fiction for Rathalla magazine, Rosemont’s literary publication. Her Italian heritage-based thesis, “Final Touchstones”, earned with distinction, is scheduled for publication by Sunbury Press within the coming months. Several of the essays from her pending book were published on City Key, Ovunque Siamo and the Mario Lanza Institute Facebook page. She recently reviewed Ellen Stone’s poetry book “What is in the Blood” for the online Philadelphia Stories 2021 Fall issue. Her poem, “Seen In Translation” was selected for inclusion in the Moonstone Arts Center Protest 2021-100 Thousand Poets for Change.

“Angle Town” by Hugh Findlay

Hugh Findlay’s writing and photography have been published worldwide. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2020 for poetry, and the Best Microfiction Anthology 2024, he is in the third trimester of life and hopes y’all like his stuff. Instagram: @hughmanfindlay. Portfolio: https://hughmanfindlay.com

Three Poems by Ed Meek

Soundtrack of the City

The soundtrack of the city
can keep you up nights
or hum in the background
a discordant tune of wheels turning
and gears interlocking, trucks
unloading, planes taking off
and coming down.
The bass thumping in a passing
smoke-filled car. A Harley roaring
down the street. Sirens wailing
of rescues and D.O.A.
daytimes the volume
jumps to life with the birds
who serenade leaf blowers, lawn mowers,
horns, the ebb and flow
of traffic, the heavy breathing buses
the scraping skateboards,
barking dogs. The disembodied voices
of neighbors you’ll never know.

The Reserved Section

I’d wandered into the reserved section by mistake
but the performance had begun
and it was too late to escape
to the seats for the general public
my inexpensive ticket already paid for.
It was as if I had pulled back the curtain
and entered the first-class cabin–
been admitted to the club
and seated at the head table.
The champagne was vintage.
The caviar Russian.
The lights dimmed.
I was just behind
a Guggenheim and a Rockefeller.
They didn’t seem to see me.
I was invisible as I often am.
For once it was an advantage.
I glanced down the row at two
black women who smiled and nodded.

Hostages to Heat

In Brooklyn when the temp hits 90
the heat invades our claustrophobic co-op.
Outside, the cement sends the heat
up through our bodies in waves.
We float in our sweat like seals in the shallows.
I used to love the feel of sweat
blanketing my body
running in the mid-day sun
and playing pick-up basketball on black tar.
Now we dread summer days when
an orange disk occupies a hazy sky,
Particles of ash coat our lungs
and the sunlight sears our eyes.

Ed Meek is the author of four books of poetry and a collection of short stories. He has had work in The Sun, The Paris Review, Plume, The North American Review, The Boston Globe. He writes book reviews for The Arts Fuse. He is a contributing editor for The Rivanna Review. He teaches creative writing at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. He lives in Great Barrington with his wife Elizabeth and their labradoodle Mookie. His most recent book is High Tide.

“How to Survive Rain in Los Angeles” by Miro Myung

New moon in Aries, and the rain is pounding down on Los Ángeles. Patio furniture is tested throughout every neighborhood as parrots take shelter in the branches guarding us from high above. Love is a theme of this erotic moon phase–as well as the honking of car horns as the 110 South dangerously fills with standing water. Disjointed, disoriented, chaotic flow of the city that captures so many of our imaginations slowly molds you into its form: flexible jelly with a core of steel.

This is one of those days where it seems safer to just stay in bed. It sounds bad out there I think to myself as the beeswax candle cultivates a world of shadows on my bedroom walls. It’s 6:42am and the forecast is already set–scroll down and down, fall in and out of love with the bathroom mirror, cook dinner with your ex, play tug-of-war with your dog–do anything but open that front door.

But if you do have to leave, make sure to have water in your car in case you get sucked into a sinkhole on Sunset Boulevard and eat a healthy breakfast, but–no eight-hour fasting-whole-thirty kind of thing. Eat something hearty that gives your day a “leg up” or a “leg sideways” so that you can circumnavigate the loneliness of rain in Los Ángeles. The only certainty of today is that we will all have patio furniture that is going to be sixty-percent rot by summer and that our collective anxiety about the rain pounding that engineered Ikea wood will also hold us back from saving our four-legged friends from their fate. When it rains in Los Ángeles we live in denial–like when it’s 108 degrees Fahrenheit–we put a podcast on, throw some boy-brow gel on or whatever makeup makes you feel more ghastly and beautiful, and traverse through the city like it’s made for living.

To live in Los Ángeles is to be in love with the non-ending. Other cities might promise you solid conclusions–you know the neighborhoods well enough to predict the calm dinner out with the same friends, you know that people will complain about traffic and the influx of tech workers, you know that there will be no crowd spilling out of the neighborhood bar on a Tuesday night, you know that if you are lucky enough you will end well here in a way that will satisfy the order of things–a house, a career, a marriage, and even a golden retriever.

To live in Los Angeles is to be in love with the non-ending; a neighborhood bar is hard to locate because the highways keep beckoning you further and further into the tangled web of homes and palm trees and tiny restaurants bursting at their seams and linen-wearing humans picking herbs in Griffith and hidden farms in South Central twirling disco balls over colorful chickens and bowling alleys that sit along train tracks serving sukiyaki and cheese fries. This is a city of lonely transplants mixed impossibly with families who have lived here for generations and they clash in their cultures, but together, fall in love with the clean air after a steady rainfall.

On the highway is where I find my largest community–I used to think of myself as entering the herd, but now I see it as a convergence of “we’re all in this together” mentality and a “we are also very fucked” thought process. I love it. Does that make me abnormal? I’m not sure if Los Ángeles has a barometer for “normal” like smaller, more organized towns do. To be wacky, loud, disruptive, joyous, angry, and incredibly scared is to blend in here. If you’re not a little worried from time to time you’re not driving through the city enough.

Yet within the chaos are microcosms of sensual peace–Ethiopian jazz filtering through old speakers as lemon trees drip water onto terracotta tiles, smoke from chicken being barbecued in a grocery-store parking lot that captures your imagination, sunbeams melting over two-story level buildings in Koreatown, waves in Malibu tilting towards land boasting their dolphins, the clinking of glasses in old Hollywood steakhouses where the red velvet looks better in the dim light, spiraling labyrinths in Topanga Canyon where hikers hug the famous tree, mornings in your bedroom as you listen to the music of horns and rain and parrots and your neighbor chuckling to herself.


Miró Myung published articles in Tom Tom Magazine, a poem in Luna Collective Magazine, LA County Library’s “Love Letters in Light,” and co-published poetry book “Almanac of Tiny Clouds.” She does visuals for indie band Tangerine featured in NME, The Guardian, Rolling Stone India, Billboard with a BFA from UCLA.

“Temp Job” by James B. Nicola

Walk down Fifth Avenue for lunch hour when
you have a temp job in the Forties or
the Fifties; next day, do the walk again
and I’ll bet you a hundred to one you’re
not going to see any of the same
faces. I did this for about a year
when suddenly I thought I heard my name,
or something similar (I’m still not sure).

I turned and shook a total stranger’s hand.
He squeezed, I think, my upper elbow too
as if some mutual past permitted such
a thing. The passing gesture, so unplanned,
impressed me. I could not say where he knew
me from, but I shall not forget that touch.

James B. Nicola, a returning contributor, is the author of eight collections of poetry, the latest three being Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Actor’s Guide to Live Performance won a Choice magazine award.