by Marc Alan Di Martino

My first week in New York I spotted Thurston Moore
sauntering out of a bakery on Spring St.
Artists had once flocked to SoHo in retreat
from rent hikes, but by then you couldn’t live there
without a trust fund. He nearly ran me down,
or so the memory has steeped in me.

Twenty-seven years ago, practically to the day,
and still I thrill at youth’s lust, long outgrown.

Much later I saw him browsing poetry
at Gotham Book Mart, though I’d become less
excited by sightings of jet-set gentry
and had my own dilemmas to obsess
over. Sometimes I wonder what he bought—
a babka, maybe?—amuse myself connecting the dots.