Santa Fe Poetry Broadside
Issue #9, May, 1999 : -- -1 -2 -3  1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9
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Andrew McCord

                 

A Whore in Washington Heights


Tick-tocking like my heels across the bar
Tonight, my father's message went
To Mother over the head of the boss at the far
End of a telegraph office. All day he sent

Urgent and Overnight wires to Sao Paulo
Or Rio and then would interrupt contact
On his handset with a slug. Out the window
Mother, listening for the tap, tap, tap,

Would be coming home from work just then--
She knew enough Morse Code to get the sense ...
I do Long Island Wednesdays, then Dominicans.
I'll try to live anyway I can,

But in those days you couldn't do any better
In Bahia than telegraph operator.



Copyright © 1999 Andrew McCord.

About the poet.

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Issue #9, May, 1999 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.