Day 15: "1990..." by Steve Peacock

Day 15, halfway through 30 Days of The Five-Two, features "1990..." by Steve Peacock. Steve also lends his powerful pipes to poetry as a Voice of the Five-Two.

Feel free to join the tour with a comment, tweet, or blog post of your own. Here's the schedule.

Steve Peacock

1990, OR A CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE POEM

Took in the Moscow Circus
tenth row at Radio City
with a Puerto Rican girl
and her half-Dominican daughter
afterwards spoiling them
with all-American hot dogs
purchased from a Turkish vendor
in Rockefeller Center
where Nigerian hustlers
of fake Swiss watches
swarmed a wandering horde
of naïve Chinese tourists
gaping at the gold-gilded statue
of the Greek god Prometheus
as we hailed a cab driven
by a blue-turbaned Sikh
who flew us cross town
toward Murphy's Bar & Grill
where Japanese TVs
manufactured in Mexico
featured plastic-faced broadcasters
reporting live on-the-scene
from the Mormon-owned Marriott after
an Egyptian assassin blasted
an Israeli-American rabbi
with a .357 magnum
made in New Hampshire
and while furiously fleeing
struck an old gent named Irving
commandeered a taxi
from Garcia the cabbie
reciprocated shots
with Postal Officer Acosta
right outside the building
where I first encountered
the Puerto Rican girl
earlier in the year.


Steve reads "1990...":



Subscribe to Channel Five-Two for first view of new videos.


Steve confesses: "Five years as a 'hotel detective' of the Helmsley Palace hotel in Manhattan during the late 80s-early 90s sparked the ideas that generated this poem; much of "1990..." is based on both actual and generalized events that took place around me during that tumultuous time in New York City history."

STEVE PEACOCK is a writer, actor, and educator who was born in the Bronx and now lives in New Jersey. An excerpt from his memoir-in-progress, "Play Dead, Roll Over," was a finalist in Creative Nonfiction magazine's "Anger & Revenge" contest in 2011. Gravel: A Literary Journal in 2013 published a similar version of that excerpt. A longer version is forthcoming in Crime Factory. His poetry has appeared in Monkeybicycle, Edison Literary Review, InDigest, The Idiom, and South Jersey Underground.

Steve Peacock, Voice of The Five-Two

Volunteer performers record Five-Two Poems of the Week for poets unable to do so. If you'd like to become a Voice of The Five-Two, contact me.

Steve is a writer and emcee/ring announcer/voice talent who was born in the Bronx and now lives in New Jersey. His poetry has appeared in The Five-Two, Monkeybicycle, Edison Literary Review, and InDigest. An excerpt from his true-crime memoir-in-progress, "Play Dead, Roll Over," was an unpublished finalist in Creative Nonfiction magazine's "Anger & Revenge" contest in 2011. Gravel: A Literary Journal and Crime Factory have since published separate excerpts. Peacock has been writing professionally since 1995, when The Tampa Tribune juxtaposed his editorial "Sleaze Has an Allure Only Money Can Buy” against famed columnist Mike Royko’s perspective on actor Hugh Grant’s prostitution scandal.

Poems read by Steve

ALL VOICES OF THE FIVE-TWO