How fortunate the boy
holding his father’s hand
crossing the street
coming home from a movie
they let him stay
up late to see
in the night and the rain
the taxi making a left
pulling him under its wheels
injuring the father
instantly almost painlessly
killing the boy so that he will never
suffer the disappointment
of being a man
lucky boy
child of our neighborhood vigil
mourned by candlelight
and news cameras
hero of our petition to the mayor
about this bad intersection
but the father is unfortunate
whose screams my neighbor says
curdled her blood
and the taxidriver is unfortunate
who will never again
embrace his own son
with a mind of shining dawn
Major American poet and critic Alicia Ostriker has been twice nominated for a National Book Award, and is the author of fourteen volumes of poetry, including The Book of Seventy (2009), which won the Jewish Book Award for Poetry, and The Old Woman, the Tulip and the Dog, published in 2014. Ostriker’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Antaeus, The Nation, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, The Atlantic, MS, Tikkun, and many other journals, and her work has been widely anthologized.