Clara Israel, real enough,
she’s 93 but says she’s 92 always takes
a year off from the truth
lives a life of going to the supermarket
(Pioneer, for cottage cheese et al)
the cardiologist Dr. Bergman (not handsome)
comes home one day wearing one
of her three navy blue Talbot suits
left over from the days when she was
a JP Morgan Chase Bank teller
and as she walks into her undistinguished
hallway on the corner of 86th and Columbus
a building that doesn’t even qualify
for tenement status still it’s a good location
she pays $846 dollars a month
for her small one bedroom
lived there 57 years
Clara Israel walks into her lobby
sees a crowd from the building
she dislikes most of her neighbors
too thin too sure of themselves
and there she sees one of those
too thin athletic people young
man who seems to jog continuously
she sees him lying in an actual pool of blood
just like a character on the old Perry Mason
dead right in front of the row
of mailboxes he happens to have
been stabbed or shot
right in front of her very mailbox.
No mail today she thinks,
and then, Oh God.
Love story
Lived in Inwood, loved Mrs. Israel's neighborhood too