James McGirk

James McGirk

Artificial Intelligence, ML Marketplaces

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Prose Poem

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From Wikipedia

BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT – Myrtle Ave.

Not every nexus needs glamour but where Myrtle and Wycoff Avenues meet there is – of a seedy sort. Where the M- and L-lines cross, where Ridgewood, Queens slopes down to meet Bushwick, Brooklyn, lies the densest concentration of beauty supply stores in New York City. Here, for the discerning consumer of polyvinyl wigs or discount hair dyes, is a bonanza of buying opportunity; but for the rank amateur choking on fragrant ketone contrails, these are a rare opportunity to spot postmodern potions shorn of marketing magic. Row after row, they reduce to bare bottles stacked on stamped steel.

Reasonable prices diluted through volume. Cash accepted gladly. Cards keyed reluctantly in on a gooey pad, the line behind chitters and taps booted toes.

North. Transverse. Traverse, bags of swag rustle and crinkle. What had been predominantly white semaphore extends bluing, vanishing in a blurred dot of cars, people and buying opportunity. Primary colors appear. Discount department stores become big box banks; taco stands become Taco Bell; bodegas become 7-11s; Food Dimensions, A&P; arm-linked families of Puerto Ricans give way to jostling Italian teens who seem threatening until they clamber into cars, leased, but luxury marquees all the same.

A triangle square; benches for resting, inset, a World War I memorial hemmed in by fluttering flags (billings, not battle colors). Christmas lights coil around railings, cycles streak by, Teutonic surnames carved on columnar base, symbolic squad teeters on top, its perimeter observed by crenulated balconies; the gothic script stamped but fading on the apartment awnings below.

Then up, past Pizza Hut, and the porn store, to another transverse, Freshpond Road, marking the end of the BID, the beginning of Maspeth and a hypotenuse back to the beginning of Myrtle.

~JAMES MCGIRK (Group II)

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Post date

February 4, 2010

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by Jamie

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Posted in Clippings, Fiction, Ridgewood.

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Tagged Prose Poem.

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7 thoughts on “Prose Poem”

  1. Jamie says:
    February 5, 2010 at 02:19

    Am tempted to leave in some of the nicer, more realistic spam comments. Too bad it would fuck up the algorithms, and we can’t have that.

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  2. Yoosef says:
    February 5, 2010 at 18:33

    Jamie? This is a piece of shit.

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    1. Jamie says:
      February 6, 2010 at 01:09

      Yeah, yeah – Cadence changes too much from one graf to the next. How was Yemen?

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  3. Yoosef says:
    February 7, 2010 at 21:55

    Terrible. Strip searches at the border. Fucking drilled into the hull of my ship! But your advice was good though

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    1. Yoosef says:
      February 7, 2010 at 21:55

      Oh, sorry, I meant that as a reply

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      1. Jamie says:
        February 8, 2010 at 12:43

        That’s fine. But I thought I captured ‘a moment,’ you know, collapsed the contradicting cultural assumptions about Ridgewood, parsed the countervailing forces, encapsulated it all in the columnar twist of the memorial?

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        1. Yoosef says:
          February 8, 2010 at 12:43

          You’re such a HACK

          Log in to Reply

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