Street Instructions

Stephen Ruffus

Night is a hood

after a day’s exile stepping

over broken glass.

I scratch fractured stories

on brick walls, sidewalks,

the underpass for pigeons

to sing to.  They are

all that I am, my only

letters to the world.

A library is a good place

for hiding.  You can tear

pictures from art books

of the famous paintings

far across the East River

tape them onto

your bedroom wall

and feel like

you’re something.

Make a few holes

in your t-shirt before

someone does it for you.

Scuff up your brand new

PF Flyers and deny

all others the pleasure.

At the corner store buy

a Mission orange soda.

No one will steal a swig.

I’ll spit in the bottle first.

Here you keep what is

yours by corrupting it.

First published in American Journal of Poetry.  In "Street Instructions," I describe the loneliness and vulnerability I felt as an adolescent growing up in a New York City neighborhood, and the small ways I challenged its threats and asserted my own identity to survive.