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Thursday, April 21, 2016

THE SECAUCUS FIRE

by Rick Mullin


April 19, 2016


It burned for hours on the Internet,
the skyline of Manhattan lost behind
a meadow ghost of plodding smoke, regret,
despair, ennui and memory combined.

I watched it at my desk. I shared the link,
anticipating mayhem on the Path
to Hoboken, a donnybrook outside
the Railhead Bar, a cavalcade of wrath
and rank confusion. Madness. Suicide.
The Erie Lackawanna on the brink

of nothing, I would learn at 5 o’clock.
An unremarkable commute. The crowd
was not in crisis mode. The normal shock
and shuffle led upstairs to where no cloud
of earthly origin drove Jerseyans to drink.


Rick Mullin's new poetry collection is Stignatz & the User of Vicenza.