In the current issue of the Write Launch

Saudade
One last trip
on the New Lots Line
that trundles up
from its tunnel

just as the Brooklyn neighborhoods
turn to Brownsville,
turn to near ruin.
The train takes the 90 degree

curve on 98th Street—
where my uncle
and aunt once lived,
and where the train’s screech might

wake the dead
or make you wish
you were,
and deposits me

at the Saratoga Avenue Station.
It’s been more
than 50 years
since I last rode this train

and stepped off at this station.
Slowly, I move down the steps
where my friend Artie
was knifed to death,

and where my mother was held up
twice. I’m here to walk.
Take in what my ancient
senses will allow.

It’s my “not much of a victory tour.”
I look at everything.
Smell, hear everything.
I move at little more than

a geriatric’s pace now.
Remember how I strode these streets
like I owned them?
And in a way,

I suppose I did.
I pass the old elementary school,
the first tenement I lived in—
I bet the people still sleep on the fire escape.

The street names have changed—
as have the people
who live in these crumbling buildings,
worse for 50 more years of wear.

Yet things are much the same—
working people with families
and kids playing stickball
in the schoolyard.

Here is where I left my childhood—
who knew it was so easy to lose?
Wearier but no wiser,
I Uber back to my hotel.