NEW HERE

Those young men joked
in our evacuation drill
about how they’d tear
down the stairs.
They must be new here.
They thought it was funny.
We queued & stepped
carefully down eight flights
& met at our spot
behind the fence
in the parking lot
while behind us
others checked
the closets & the stalls
& these two guys said if
it were a real emergency
they’d be like
that Seinfield
guy and knock the old
& infirm out of the way
‘til they were safely outside.

But these new guys don’t know
when the towers were twice as high
as the skyline & and then they weren’t.
On this side of the river,
we all got out okay that morning

- By Anthony Buccino
From ONE MORNING IN JERSEY CITY
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.

SNOW DAY

In the old days, before the Internet
and all those useless cable TV channels,
after we’d cleared sidewalks and drive
and it looked like we’d be snowed in
for a while, or until the town plows
came rumbling past a time more or two
we’d walk down the hill, sliding & laughing
to Radcliffe Deli & buy a stack
of magazines & food treats – and milk, too,

to help us endure our cabin fever.
Sometimes we’d take the dog there
and tie her leash to the fire plug – or
a drainpipe or something secure.
The walk home in the fresh fallen snow
uphill on fresh-plowed streets – man,
that was Christmas-card perfect.

- By Anthony Buccino
From Retrieving Labrador Days
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved. Photos and content may not be used for commercial purposes without written permission.
******************

GROVE STREET SUNRISE

Bloomfield, N.J.

Bemoaning the early hour of the day,
the summer morning light still asleep
as the sun – over there – considers
rising above New York City.
Were I on Montauk Point
this lightening moment
would be minutes past,
but here in Bloomfield
the lights are on
at Grove Street station.
Pass the jazz sculpture,
that’s not work, it’s music,
still resting in night shadows.
Pass the ticket vending machines
to stand under the overhang
and wait for the five-fifty.
The sun awakens
while we are underground,
hunkered in a soot lined tunnel.
We emerge Penn Station,
amble by rote
up escalators to our PATH cars,
cross the hundred year old bridge
over the ten thousand year old Passaic,
over a slight hill, and arc
down to Harrison Station
where other early risers
await this very PATH train.
Across the meadows the golden sky
over-exposes the big city’s
square and pointy skyline.
It is the sun and Harborside
is to the east.

- By Anthony Buccino
From VOICES ON THE BUS
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

OVERLOOK

On the street named Overlook
many years ago, a decade or two or so
somebody’s little brother, or maybe
It was somebody’s little sister,
drowned in a family pool when
everyone thought someone else
was watching and nobody was.

The street is set on the
terrace side of a High Street hill,
you see, with houses higher
on one side than the other.
The low side yards back
Spring Garden School and field.
A hidden walkway prevails
& school children walked the path
for decades back and yet to come.
You walk the street now and hear
the children play and there’s hardly
A thought, and certainly no plaque
For that drowned little boy, or girl.

-- Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

WAITING FOR THE BUS

Belleville, N.J.

Cars speed down Franklin Avenue.
A small curb, two breakaway traffic signs,
a concrete trash can and a fireplug
protect me from skidding chunks
of steel, glass, plastic and rubber.

Up the block old men cross
to the Chandelier Restaurant
in the rain. The cars do not slow,
the old men time them as they pass,
then muster all their speed to scoot across.

When it rains at the bus stop, you get wet.
An umbrella might help a little bit,
but you get wet.
Duck in the doorway of the Bank of America
but keep an eye on the traffic up at the light,
that’s the first place you’ll see the bus
coming for you.

In the doorway of the bank
you stand out of the rain
but you’re still out in the rain.
Your umbrella here is as useless
as a three-dollar bill. You get wet.

At Continental and Franklin, sometimes
waiting here for the bus, you smell burgers
or something else cooking at Wendy’s.
Did you know General Washington marched
by this very corner a few hundred years ago.
Makes you wonder what the traffic was like
crossing this road in 1776 with British troops
not so far behind trying to take your fare?

I remember when A & P was where Wendy’s is.
Teen Angel and I went to buy stuff kids buy
at the supermarket and we’d dally a bit after paying
to check out the beautiful blond checkout girl
who wore short skirts. She was always nice to us.
Her younger sister was equally beautiful.
She was our grade but she was one of those girls
who was too beautiful for plain Joes to talk to.
She ran with an older crowd.

Maybe the A & P moved out already
before the building burned down to the ground,
I’m not sure anymore.
Nowadays, there’s a new, bigger A & P
around the corner a ways
where the Acme used to be
on Belleville Avenue in Bloomfield.

When it was the Acme store, my mom
won a diamond pendant in a giveaway.
They called to say she’d won, she thought
it was a joke. She never won anything.
There was that once on Bowling for Dollars
when she was the home winner.
And a few times she finally won at Bingo!
Splitting $25 with eleven other winners.

My sister won the raffle once
at the Holy Family bazaar.
I remember she gave some money
to the little girl who picked her winning ticket.
My sister used to take the bus from this street
to the subway to her key punch job
at Mutual Benefit. When she was late for work,
teasing her hair or putting on makeup,
she asked Mom to drive her
to this bus stop on the corner
or if she was real late
to the subway station on Fifth Street.
The same place I’m heading this very day.

If there was one thing Mama didn’t like
it was driving in rush hour traffic.
When she was a girl she lived in Newark
and took the trolley everywhere.
When I was a boy, we took the 37 bus
to the old subway and shopped downtown
at Bamberger’s department store.
If I wasn’t too much of a pest, she bought me
a hot dog and orangeade at the basement stand.
Like those Presidential Subway Cars, that A&P
and Bamberger’s, though, Mama is gone.
Here, the bus is coming for me.

- By Anthony Buccino
From VOICES ON THE BUS
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

MURRAY THE GROUND HOG

On the west bank
of the Newark City Subway tracks
near Davenport Avenue
and the abandoned Heller Parkway stop,
near the senior citizen warehouse
and opposite the pathetic junkyard
that passes for the maintenance yard,
there, sometimes, on a sunny day,
often in the evening ride home,
when the lightrail in which you are traveling
might be stopped for traffic,
you might look out your window
towards the setting sun
and down below,
above the tufts of grass
you might spot
a cute ball of brown fur we call
Murray the ground hog looking back.
How he got here, who will ever know?
Maybe he took a left at Poughkeepsie?
He rises to see us go by, sometimes.
If you blink, you may miss him.
Oh, sometimes he’ll be in his burrow,
blogging or surfing the net
for gophers and prairie dogs
looking for a good time.
You see Murray the ground hog lives
in a fairly safe world.
He doesn’t get screened by big machines
set up by Homeland Security,
the nearby fences are topped by barbed wire
and the singing overhead wires
warn away hawks and such from the sky
above his wildlife patch.
Not too many four-legged foxes in town.
Maybe an occasional bear lost in the city
but they rarely get to this side of the park.
Newark is no place for wildlife.
You see, Murray the ground hog’s
burrow entrance is off the beaten path
and tucked into a berm,
mostly covered with weeds and such,
but his very presence alongside man’s Iron Horse
threatens modern locomotion.
You can be sure the suits in NJT’s
downtown penthouse
are concerned Murray could dig the wrong way,
and, well, ZAP!
Not only to Murray,
but he could short circuit the city subway
and the new loop to Broad Street.
It could happen, you know.
I’m loathe to reveal
Murray the ground hog’s exact location,
or even his real name and sex,
as he might be deemed a threat to Homeland Security
and before you know it,
crews with rakes and hoes
set upon his ancillary brush to lure
and remove the cute critter
from his underground shelter.
(If you see a cement mixer along the fence,
bet it’s not getting a new foundation!)

I like to think my cute ground hog is safe
in his underground chambers and tunnels.
Maybe he’s sitting in the air conditioning
reading the NJ-dot-com Transit blogs?
Although, truth be told, I haven’t seen
the little guy in a while.
Maybe it’s been too hot for him.
Maybe I forgot to look out?
Maybe he’s got a girlfriend across the mews
and they are looking to settle down
and raise a family in the lush green park.
Or he shifted his train-spotting hours.
Or maybe it has something to do
with the large rocks and sticks cast
about his entry point.
He’d surely be a loser when set upon
by street-wise boys with implements of destruction.
Or maybe Murray the ground hog has moved on
because of the defoliant used alongside the tracks
to keep them clear of undergrowth,
some modern day version
of Newark-made Agent Orange,
that turns the vegetation brown
and allows the run off storm water
to run off somewhere else.
If you see Murray some day,
give him our regards.

- By Anthony Buccino
From VOICES ON THE BUS
Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.
******************

BOOTH PARK CAROMS

Behind the bakery,
the former Texaco station
down the wall in the Third River
the ducks await castoff cakes
The geese, and seagulls too,
show up for their dough,
then all,
merrily, merrily, merrily
swim upstream.

Third River runs
through Booth Park
right down the middle,
breaking up
upper Booth Park
from lower Booth Park,
breaking up the wide field
for baseball and soccer
and some sledding, too,
on the high side,
of the Yantacaw Creek
running through
from the lower playground
where once upon
a summer day long, long ago
my cousins and I played caroms
like Minnesota Fats
and Paul Newman’s Hustler.
And there in Booth Park
in 1964 my puppy,
a mongrel mutt named Butch,
lost out the ‘smallest dog contest’
to the Nutley kid,
a favorite and a regular, too.
My cousins cried out, “FIX!” but
my dog and I just went home
across the river that runs through
Booth Park and up the hill
to good old Gless Avenue
in Belleville.

- By Anthony Buccino
From Retrieving Labrador Days

- By Anthony Buccino
From AMERICAN BOY: Pushing Sixty
also appears in Yountakah Country - a poetic view of Nutley old and new
Copyright © 2009-2013 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.

PIZZA WARS OF 2006

Pizza War of 2006
by Anthony Buccino

Only in my town with its open school lunch
Would there be so many pizzerias
Vying for label of Best in Town
You had Ralph’s for a while
Then they stepped aside, to be fair
Until it was time to raise more dough
And Michael’s claimed the prize
With the count it was disputed in the backroom
And two winners emerged with the title
The formerly friendly businessmen
Now engaged in a firm debate
Who puts the best pizza on the plate

It all started so innocuously, innocently, in fact,
For the Jaycees who raised scholarship money
So Nutley’s best and brightest could afford college

So now you have a pizza war
And the tossers’ dispute unsettled
As we wait for the this year’s winners
Have called in the big guns to decide the winner
The League of Women Voters will be overseeing
The pizza wars this year, and they decided
That each person shall have only one vote
The Pizza Challenge they are calling it
This the tenth annual event of pies
When once again Nutley pizzerias will vie

The loser this year, we hear, will
Sleep with the anchovies

- By Anthony Buccino

From the upcoming YOUNTAKAH COUNTRY A Poetic View of Nutley Old and New
Copyright © 2010-2017 by Anthony Buccino, all rights reserved.