SING WHAT: Poems of Philadelphia

By Ernest Yates

This is Ernest Yates’s seventeenth volume of poems, and the fourteenth volume in an ongoing series based on his wanderings through Philadelphia streets.

So the city is a human habitat, a shared home. Still it’s impossible to know Philadelphia’s hundred neighborhoods; impossible as well to know their significance. What dreams, what flimsy speculations the imagination conceives?of itself and of its place?as it ponders this unknowable scene, this physical realm, this body of the city. By itself the physical detail speaks a dreary idiom, harsh and flat; but the wonder of its mystery may give rise to melody, a tuneful song of the possible. For whatever else it is, whatever it may be, over and over again the city proves it is there. Dreaming, we know it is there.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9798369415948

Ernest Yates

Born in Ancon, Panama, and raised in New Orleans, Ernest Yates obtained a doctorate in English from the University of Pennsylvania. He has lived and worked in the Philadelphia area for fifty years. Mr. Yates has published poetry in dozens of literary magazines and journals, and has won the Grand Prize of the Pennsylvania Poetry Society, among other poetry awards. For further information, please consult Mr. Yates’s website? ernestyates.com

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Copyright © 2024 by Ernest Yates.

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Rev. date: 02/14/2024

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

(Hoods

Strawberry Mansion

Nicetown

Overbrook

Philadelphia Southwest

Point Breeze

Center City: Thirteen Ways of Looking at Oz

Yorktown

Angora

University City

Penn Knox

(Shard

Washington Square West

Fox Chase

Center City West

Andorra

Manayunk

Squirrel Hill

Mantua

(Say What

Tacony

Frankford

North Central

Parkwood

Little Saigon

Lower Moyamensing

Northern Liberties

Center City

(Stuck

Bella Vista

Logan

Oxford Circle

Roxborough

Newbold

Olney

East Germantown

(In Parenthesis

Fishtown

East Falls

Wissinoming

Juniata

Lawncrest

Wynnefield Heights

(Hail, Errata

North Broad

Naval Square

South Broad

Chestnut Hill

Parkway

Fairmount

Girard Estates

East Oak Lane

Bustleton

(Turnstile

To Jacqueline

Sing What

(HOODS

I see it . . . hear it . . . smell it . . .

like mist

the city composing itself

i’m dust compared to its enormity

brief compared to its duration

and i want to sing a tuneful song

instead of its flat truth.

I listen to its voice―brash, harsh, loud.

How large it is. How long it lasts.

And the notes it speaks―

those crisp flat ugly notes . . .

they make no sense to me.)

STRAWBERRY MANSION

Errata say for example see

aloofness

of a darkskinned man

pennycolored sepiaman

aloofness printed on scowling face

he won’t join in bawdy chatter

he won’t do shit street jobs forever

let chartreuse vests of workmen gather

he knows better he knows better

oh see Errata say

the man collapsing

what he is has never been

slack frame sagging on wire fence

cool standoffish

backward away from workmen gathering

tools such lifeless tools

on grimy pavement scattered

laid out waiting

the boss’s command the worker’s hand

rakes spades powermowers

leafblowers

he’s here proudman

he’s here today

but he won’t do shit street jobs forever

in this beat-down hood with a fancy name

by wire fence by heap of rubble

oh say Errata

did i make this did you make this

did this man

this cool aloof standoffish man make this

oh say.

NICETOWN

Old man walking

seeing so much

fitful wanderings

bringing him to school

sidewalk cracked like his wrinkled face

slouching frame

slowing to standstill

inert at this massive structure

battlements, towers

above main offices

can he relearn pride here

can he relearn passion

the way banners say WELCOME TO BULLDOG NATION

can he relearn hope

from slogans of uplift

TELL THEM WE ARE RISING!

hope from SIMON GRATZ’s

many-colored muraled walls

of wholesome family life

and communal feeling.

None of these matter, though―

not pride, not passion or hope―

or they matter only to kids.

But do they teach