Elisabeth Frischauf

AT FIRST AVENUE AND 97TH STREET

summer comes to an end.

Bright, cold night.
Another body falls.
Slumps against dull white brick wall
beneath Orion’s dagger, high in Autumn’s sky.

Racial mishmash, brown fleck eyes, sunken
stare startled—the moon, a blue one on its rise.
Shrunken, patched Brooks Brother’s suit—
label inviolate white sticks out stark
next to a hand frozen in surprise.
Tabby licks a lone leftover chicken bone, still
in its container. Apple Watch, broken. Star
of David yanked from a chain around the neck
and stuffed into the only nostril—other sliced away—
knife fight. Long ago. Tooth stumps sport
bits of meat; one lone incisor, like a sentinel
standing at attention beams beyond the outraged
mouth. Lots of cheap rum had fun down there.

Ambulance flashes by. Parks in a pool of light down the block.
Body silent on the street; detective on his beat,
Who, what, why? Shakes his head.

Manhattan’s East River slapslaps slow.
Unusual quiet on this street.

Looks about 35, detective says.
A passing EMT on his way to work,
stops, shrugs, being helpful says—
Yeah, he’s a regular at our ER.
Goes by Bonco. Homeless. A gent.
Always with a ready smile.
Always got me, that one gold tooth.

Blood pool, hardened, viscous gel below the abdomen.
Leaked down the legs. Formed a cushion
round his nobbled knees. So much blood
for such a thin man.

Cushions his shrunken butt—
so much unexpected cushioning
for his passing.

That's the stabber’s choice, lower abdomen, senior detective
explains to second-in-command.
Seen a series lately. He’s the third so far;
this one’s the most bizarre.

Rounds the body inside the yellow tape corral.
May be some DNA on the star.
Hands his second the items to be bagged.
They don’t spend a lot of time.

5’6” male—appears older than stated age—
the language on the the label that will flap
around his feet in the morgue.


Elisabeth's YouTube reading of "At First Avenue and 97th Street"


Elisabeth confesses: "I created a character from a patient I attended at Metropolitan Hospital, located at the title’s address The writing challenge, a crime scene in brief, inspired me to construct the back story. Our society tolerates so many homeless folk, stories unknown, disregarded, vulnerable to murder and other death."

ELISABETH FRISCHAUF, physician, storyteller, and visual artist, writes poems for today’s world: technology, environmental concerns, memory, relationships in a variety of forms and has two published full-length memoir books in verse. Frischauf lives on a small plot of land north of New York City. Both places inspire her.