• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary navigation
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Painted Bride Quarterly

  • About
    • About PBQ
    • People
  • Issues
    • Current Issue
    • Past Issues
    • Print Annuals
  • Podcast
    • Latest Podcast
    • All Podcasts
  • News & Events
  • Submit
  • Shop
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Prose
  • Contributors
  • Current Issue

Daniel Kane: Poem (the sexiness of the ancient world)

May 16, 2011 by PBQ

The sexiness of the ancient world
whether in cities still intact or now in ruins

is pretty hot, I admit it. But, come on,
compared to the miraculous pastel clarity of environment that the bells of the ice-cream truck engender

as their tinky peals mix with their lover the air as the truck wends its way east on 12th street,
then west on 13th and north on A, up to 14th street where it heads east again to make a right and go south

on B until 11th street, where it has to take an unexpected
right on 11th because of construction between 9th and 10th

streets on A? Please, help this driver.
Even I do not know where he is now. It is like that song

about Poor Charlie who rode the streets of Boston,
the man who never returned [The sound of ice-cream truck bells again out his window]

But wait, outside my window I hear the bells again, and
the barking of a medium-sized dog. It is OK, I suppose. It sounds

like the truck’s heading east again, maybe on 10th. Perhaps
it will go north on C and west on 11th three blocks to A, north one block then east again on 12th, where

I can run out of the building and flag the ice-cream truck down,
buy a Supersicle Sour Tower, a Choco Taco, a Twister Cool Blue.

Filed Under: Contributors 68, Issue 68, Poetry, Poetry 68 Tagged With: Contributors 68, Daniel Kane, Poetry, Poetry 68

Primary Sidebar

Recent News & Events

PBQ @ AWP!

PBQ Poet’s Publishing Premier: Carlos Andrés Gómez’s Fractures

Issue 100 Has Arrived!

Temporarily Closing Submissions

PBQ presents: Slam Bam Reboot

© 2020 Painted Bride Quarterly. Contact PBQ: info@pbqmag.org