New Linoleum
Stand Back And Admire
On Avenue C,
on the Lower East Side,
sometime in the late 1950s —
new linoleum arrived
with fanfare and excitement.
Father spread out
the ocean of newness,
flooding the kitchen floor.
Visiting Uncle Sasha
who fashioned himself a poet
proclaimed with excitement, that —
anyone from the truly rich,
to the absurdly wealthy,
might never experience the joy
of this kind of renewal —
A Grand Rejuvination he called it.
He said he’d write about it.
He extrapolated.
Primarily—
for those with neverending spondulix,
nothing was ever allowed to get
that old, so food stained, cracking
and curling in the corners.
What old things do they have
that could be
so dramatically replaced?