Gina and Nick Leone Remember Their Days in the Brill Building
They met in the lobby one fine day in a sultry JFK summer. Gina knew she was bound to be his, be his baby. He banged out songs for ARC Music and pitched them Whitey Ford-style to Bobby Vee, yet “My Girl’s Eyes” wouldn’t hold 16 candles to the one he’d save for their first dance as man and wife, “Forever Begins Today.”
They stand outside 1619 Broadway one fine Bloomberg N.Y. summer day. The black granite and polished brass doors look as they did when the Leones of Bensonhurst were teenagers in love. Nick may not be Neil and hasn’t written a tune since Nixon, but in his girl’s eyes he’ll forever be the man who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong.
The Contemplation of a Work of Shotgun Art by William S. Burroughs
For once, a blotch of red fanning out from a bullet hole is paint.
Poem Inspired by Bela Lugosi as Dracula on television, a 1958 Diane Arbus Photograph
His eyes seem to exude not menace alone,
but surprise, as well, not the character,
but the man who portrays the character, as if he,
through this broadcast, is discovering, two
years after his interment, he himself is undead.
The Coffeehouse in the Sky
I want to believe in a heaven where the angels sing like
Lead Belly and play mouth harps instead of finger harps,
and the Lord will hand me my Guild G-37 blond guitar,
tuned by John Renbourn, and awash in golden light,
Peter, Paul, and Mary – the real ones – will listen
to “Sweet and Brighter Days,” a song I wrote
in ’96, and forever I’ll pick phosphor-bronze strings
that sound sweet and bright and blessed, and the soul
of Davy Graham will nod and say, “Well done, mate.”
Joel Allegretti is the author of, most recently, Platypus (NYQ Books, 2017), a collection of poems, prose, and performance texts, and Our Dolphin (Thrice Publishing, 2016), a novella. He is the editor of Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books, 2015). The Boston Globe called Rabbit Ears “cleverly edited” and “a smart exploration of the many, many meanings of TV.”