Bowery Afternoon

Lola Ridge 1873 – 1941



Drab discoloration
Of faces, façades, pawn-shops,
Second-hand clothing,
Smoky and fly-blown glass of lunch-rooms,
Odors of rancid life…

Deadly uniformity
Of eyes and windows
Alike devoid of light…
Holes wherein life scratches -
Mangy life
Nosing to the gutter's end…

Show-rooms and mimic pillars
Flaunting out of their gaudy vestibules
Bosoms and posturing thighs…

Over all the Elevated
Droning like a bloated fly.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

19 sec read
181

Quick analysis:

Scheme XAXXB XXXXBX XAX XX
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 417
Words 65
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 5, 6, 3, 2

Lola Ridge

Lola Ridge was an anarchist poet and an influential editor of avant-garde feminist and Marxist publications best remembered for her long poems and poetic sequences She along with other political poets of the early Modernist period has been coming under increasing critical scrutiny at the beginning of the twenty-first century more…

All Lola Ridge poems | Lola Ridge Books

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