CITY SNAPSHOT

by Lorri Ventura


A minefield of homeless people
Strewn like pickup sticks
Across the pavement
On the brick and concrete sidewalks
Of Central Square

Shoppers zigzag around them
With their eyes locked on their cell phones
To avoid truly seeing
Those less fortunate than they

Cocooned in layers of raggedy cardigans
A spavined woman sprawls along a bench
Clutching the matted fur 
Of a pumpkin-colored cat
Curled, Cheeto-like,
Against her torso

A bearded man
Lost in billowing cookie dough camouflage pants
Lurches forward in a wheelchair
That seems to be held together
By bumper stickers

He extends a coffee-stained paper cup
Toward passersby
Hoping for charity
Chuckling, he points to the largest decal
Its message:
“So many pedestrians, so little time."

A trio of laughing college students
Engrossed in conversation
Trample on a potholder-crocheted afghan
That a young girl has spread out on the sidewalk
To define the boundaries of her “home”

Spitting profanities
She glares up at the oblivious trespassers
Her peers in age if not in fortune
And brusquely swats at the footprints
Left on her most precious possession

Dickensian scenes in the 21st century
Mock our claims of social enlightenment
Expose our lack of humaneness
And beg us all to wake up


* * * * *

Lorri Ventura is a retired special education administrator living in Massachusetts. She is new to poetry-writing. Her poems have been featured in several anthologies, in Red Eft Journal, Quabbin Quills, Mad Swirl, and AllPoetry. She is a three-time winner of Writing In A Woman's Voice's Moon Prize.