I'M Not Langston Hughes Comments
The subway comes above ground on 96th street, where men’s jockey shorts cling damply to the curb, defying dignity, where beer-battered boxes, cardboard constructions, stink outside on sidewalks: houses in front of houses.
Here, immigrants rush to fill the cracks of the rickety pre-war brownstones with memories of the old country and the smell of ethnic food. Who, here, remembers the Cotton Club? These houses, now just relics. Skeletons, of some brown-and-out bebop heyday.
On the corner a shopping cart doubles as a spit, and a man with plastic bags over bare feet, roasts a pigeon on a wire coat hanger. He hands out scraps of meat to a convoy of similar carts and rickshaws. Bits of bird are accepted as sacraments. Here, where church is held on the sidewalk and where bread exists
only as an abstract notion- unattainable, like money to pay the rent.
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For one I love Langston Hughes! You are without a doubt the most fluid, gifted writer I have read thus far on this entire site(i have read about fifty to sixty through and through) . Your ability to use vocabulary larger than average joe is beautiful and yet its in a rather controlled manner, which proves your ability to make poetry like math equations and business figures. My favorite line? So rich! ' Perched mid block, on a crate that used to hold oranges, a gypsy sells batteries and makes no attempt to conceal the conspicuous absence of a right eyeball.' Its detail is invigorating, and the mystical tone with the use of 'gypsy' gives your poem a larger than life and more supernatural aspect. I loved it.
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8/3/2025 5:21:21 AM # 1.0.0
You must know and understand Langston to write a poem/short story or whatever you chose to call it. There is a deep message here about the system. Thank you for this piece... J. L.