On Broadway

by Brian Tasker and Michael Dylan Welch

Honourable mention in the 2003 Haiku Poets of Northern California rengay contest. First published in Presence (England) #23, May 2004, page 38. Also published in Tug of the Current: 2004 Red Moon Anthology (Winchester, Virginia: Red Moon Press, 2005), page 112, and in Brian Tasker’s book A Ripening Peach: The Poems (Frome, Somerset, England: Bare Bones Press, 2004). Written 2 July 2003 in New York City.

another birthday . . .

overpriced cheesecake

at the neon-lit diner Brian

the rapper’s sneakers

flash at each step Michael

red light—

a streetwalker whispers

hello there . . . Brian

Club 69—

the stretch limo

turns on a blinker Michael

drunken girls

waving glowsticks Brian

a taxi home—

Broadway lights

dimmed for Hepburn Michael