*A poem about the street I live on.

It always had a bit of animal magnetism.
How can you explain
the cars that careen down
its pockmarked pavement
like a school of frenzied
hypersexual salmon
Salsa and Hip-Hop
blaring from the open windows
racing
to spawn with the others
on Somerville Ave?
It attracts
the turbaned men
with long shocks
of white beards
the pedestrian
who screams consistently
at 5 P M
to imaginary demons.
In the Spring
always a new breed
of lovers
their faces so fresh
they put you to shame...
Invariably
you drift to the porch
with the first waft
of a fragrant breeze
the cat perched on your shoulder
above it all
to take it
in
again and again.

©2008, Doug Holder

Doug Holder is the founder of Ibbetson Street Press and the arts editor of The Somerville News. His article “McLean Hospital: Poetry on the Psychiatric Ward” is reprinted here at About Poetry together with two more of his poems, “Cigarette on Psychiatric Ward” and “On the Ward: An Old Harvard Man.”

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