Off the Roosie by KC Trommer by KC Trommer published on 2022-09-26T11:14:07Z After O’Hara I get off the 7 and head home, past the Chase and the Jackson Heights penguin that, last week, someone dressed as a bunny, and I’m thinking of Frankie’s I-do-this-I-do-that poems, and my phone is dead again and I can’t afford to replace it. All I want to hear is Spoon singing got no regard for the things you don’t understand but maybe, as Lorna said, it’s a gift and there’s a poem across the street waving Yoo hoo! Over here! and trying very hard to get my attention. I get onto 37th, near what’s left of the Brunson Building after the fire on Easter Monday and I head past the Met (not that one) which they renamed Foodtown but which Honor and Joe and I will always call the Met (not that one), and then a left onto 77th and past our coffee shop where Afsal stands outside, talking, but for once does not say hello even though he looks straight at me, and it’s fine, I walk past the Berkeley and over 35th Ave., and I guess I’m home, considering that my keys have opened the door even before I realized I had them in my hand, and everything is where I left it, even in the bedroom where I keep waking alone quite suddenly to find — yes, I left you. You’ve never even been here. We Call Them Beautiful (Diode Editions, 2019) Genre poetry