Francesco Levato
 

Urban Renewal
 
 
 
 
 

Each morning a man weathered as the street argues with himself, paces out in front of the corner Walgreens in a state of perpetual motion, as if in stillness he would disappear into the heaped refuse, his breath fading into the steam of sewer caps. Another in dialog with phantoms, black cord trickling down from his earphone, undulating as it traces the faint path of veins  buried deep  beneath a cashmere overcoat sleeve uniting him with cell phone, through ether, to a reality displaced. With a precision mechanical he discards some loose change, the hollow clink of coin against tin going unnoticed, as the snow blanketing the statue of a man blindfolded with black plastic sunglasses, tin can in hand. A fixed point of reference, an obstruction in the ebb and flow, his wheelchair the completion of body and bridge spanning the distance between us, between myself and the complete stranger who rides the train with me, shares my seat, my breath, grinds me with her fur coat as she struggles with Gucci purse, Starbucks coffee, and bottle of Xanax. The distance we keep from ourselves, confrontation, the barren woman who works the crowd each evening, eyes like glass contrasting us with our own reflection, needing only a little milk for her AIDS stricken child. The puncture wounds on her arm mark boundaries unspoken, a ragged edge stitched to the patchwork of daily life in this renewal of urban decay this landscape of glass and steel, cigar stubs and food stamps.

First published in Outsider Ink

  (c)Levato 2004