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Man Resting On Tires, NYC


by Jerry Ratch


 

A man asleep on a stack of tires in front of a tire shop on 10th Aveune, NYC.

 

A store that's “open 25 hrs,” where apparently time is being manufactured.

 

The unknown new element, the 25th hour, even though the other 24 may have been shortened somewhat to come up with it.

 

The Clinton Gourmet Market next to the Queen of Sheba Ethiopian Restaurant. (Hard to write this stuff with the bus jerking around. The driver's in such a hurry, honking the horn at everybody — Get out of the damned way, I'm a bus!)

 

A young woman in shorts and sunglasses, who puts her sunglasses on the top of her head in order to study a little girl sitting on her father's lap.

 

“I want to get me one of those,” she's says, smiling. Dark eyes, her dark hair wet and hanging, fresh from a swim somewhere on the Upper West Side.

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