Corner Stores In The Middle Of The Block: That Urban Look - Softcover

Bathgate, Brad Blue

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1541290259 ISBN 13: 9781541290259

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016

Synopsis

Corner Stores In The Middle Of The Block is a book of poetry that places you in the slums of an amusing yet painful intersection, where the color blue remains the color of all streetlights and seat belts don't exist... Poetry becomes the airbag when you crash into his emotions

About this title

About the Author:

With a formula all of his own, Blue is a special brand of street poet anchorman, The IRT, A-train prophet and abuela's common sense. His cleverness is addictive, punch drunk with love and humor! -Willie Perdomo, Author of Where a Nickel Costs a Dime

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

This is where bulletproof Corner Stores never stop to take a breath...and you can catch a contact from the gun smoke... You just stepped into a tight chest situation where elbowroom is overrated and the scent of roach spray just might get you homesick...

It was 212 West 129th Street That’s where the needle skipped on the family that broke the record for all of those times the mice left holes in the loaf of bread While the roaches were playing dead like raisins... and they were backstroking in my bowl of oatmeal

I had a good stomach back then... It was during those days of free sex, good loving had a price and cold chilling was an understatement We use to get dressed up... just to go to bed...wrapped under blankets and coats and then jumped up sweating from the cries of an Alley cat in heat Then by the time you’ve reached the age of 2 or 3 you become numb to this noise and if you move down south the silence leads to your insomnia This all took place when Harlem was an armpit It was right before gentrification began to give this modern day Jericho a face-lift

It's when the middle class never came past 59th Street on the Uptown D- train... and a seat was guaranteed We sat around a lit cigarette that served as light and heat and we were like survivors of lead paint poison... and second hand smoke

It felt like we were serving time... for killing time and I don’t know shit about counting sheep... We were counting Pit Bulls to get some sleep You might see a blind man try to talk his way out of a fistfight after being accused of looking at somebody the wrong way

But I was considered the repulsive one... Crying ugly

I'm upset because I gotta' dry my socks in front of the stove with my underwear on the radiator and I started saving all of my asthma pumps, because somebody was telling me that they’re gonna be worth a lot of money some day!

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1541290259
• ISBN 13: 9781541290259
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112