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"Lincoln Road"

By Campbell McGrathPosted Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2007, at 5:59 AM ET

Click here to listen to Campbell McGrath read this poem.

Browsing, before dinner, at Books & Books,
checking out the new poems
in the new journals, the vast glass panes thrust against
by shoppers and gawkers on Lincoln Road
emit a particular cautionary hum
as they insist upon delimiting inside from out,
tongued and grimed by the fingerless
gloves of the homeless,
bodies gesturing and melding back
into the pyroclastic flow,
someone considering black lingerie next door,
bedside lamps of Italian design,
something sleek to refresh the kitchen—honey,
a silver pasta fork?—
tattooed dance clubbers and waitresses
slaloming trays through the crowd,
a woman selling jewelry knit from optical fibers
lurid as stationary fireworks, pages
of a Carioca newspaper
turning, foil off a champagne bottle golden
against the tile, pink straws, the splash
of modest fountains
in common space, a baby
in green hip-harness
staring back at me goggle-eyed, recording it all
like the tourists with digital camcorders
pre-editing their memories
and the ringing of cellphones broadcasting
a panegyric of need
with whichever hooks and trembles
we have chosen in the darkness to answer.

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Campbell McGrath, a MacArthur Fellow, teaches at Florida International University in Miami. His most recent books are Pax Atomica and Florida Poems.

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