Danny Shot Elaborates…
It is difficult to write about my poems because I’ve always believed that the poem should speak for itself. Then again, I’m not one to turn away from a challenge and this is a challenge indeed. Winter Clouds in Hoboken (p. 6) began as a haiku and grew from there:
Seagulls peck French fries
off a white Mercedes Benz
on Washington Street
While I am proud of myself for writing a haiku, there is something inherently unsatisfying (to me) about haiku. The spirit of this poem was influenced by my friend Jack Wiler’s “The Hoboken Poem.” I too wanted to write a Hoboken poem, but it didn’t come to me for years. Then I wrote the simple haiku, and thought okay, what is it that differentiates us in Hoboken, in New Jersey, from New York? As a Jersey poet, I must admit that I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder when it comes to New York poets. Part of this comes from the fact that we are easily dismissed by New Yorkers as “Jersey Poets” with all the implied connotations that come with the epithet. Even a cursory glance at the names of poets from the Garden State will show that we can hold our own with the literary heavy hitters of any place. “Winter Clouds” is an attempt to bring a touch of Hoboken street life to the world.
Winter Clouds in Hoboken
are different than New York City clouds
occasionally cumulus, lately ominous,
biblical in fact. New Jersey is not a place but
a state of mind according to my Brooklyn students,
the last frontier between irrelevance and extinction.
Everything you think it is, and more.
New Jersey is whole lotta place(s). My place is Hoboken
where neighbors share home-brewed coffee
the morning after Sandy flooded basements
in apocalyptic power surge, then darkness.
Where brass bands carrying statues fire cannons
in honor of obscure Italian saints though the midday streets.
Graffitied walls proclaim PK Kid is alive, Viva!
Not art to be sold in galleries across the river.
Where an empty parking space is a conversation starter
and a drunk girl cries next to a smashed cell phone
on my stoop two weeks before Saint Patrick’s Day,
a pool of green puddled at her feet.
Where we pretend we invented baseball
where everyone’s grandma dated Sinatra.
Where the poets drink like poets
and are ignored like poets.
Where the ends justify the ends
and happy hours last all night.7
Seagulls peck French fries
off a white Mercedes Benz
on Washington Street
The clouds are different
here. They just are.
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