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Urban Sketch
Robert Coles

On a playground in the Bronx
three black boys in jeans
sprawled on a bench
near the basketball court.
Their eyes half closed,
their heads nodding
as their boom box blared.
Behind them, above shadows
that spilled from street lamps,
moths smashed into the glare
of neon light, and in the background
against Manhattan’s skyline,
like a silver cord that
draws a curtain,
the graffiti strewn el train
rushing nowhere.

—
Since 1990, Robert Coles has published over one hundred poems in various literary journals, anthologies, and magazines. His most recent poems appeared in Philadelphia Stories, summer 2021 and fall 2022. Also, in 2021 he placed as a semifinalist in the 26th MacGuffin Poet Hunt Contest.

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