Poem by Keith Gaboury

Tourist

My Bostonian legs swoop and stumble
on High Street to the harbor of hearts
I read about in a travel book. A throng

of waterfront locals are so ready to toss me out
with the fish guts as a lost California tourist
on the hunt for Paul Revere’s something

and Ben Franklin’s grave. What?
How can I be an outsider in a city
I call my own? But I am

as I clutch a cheap plastic map
with my Atlantic blue pupils
blinding blinking into the ocean deep.

And now? Now I must head home
just as the Red Sox pitch their final pitch.
Son of a bitch — ticket holders always flood

the Green Line for an hour of torture
along a mile of movement. At last,
I finally find comfort in my Brighton

enclave. Fans cheer into the wicked darkness,
I turn off my bedroom light, and a pair
of Massachusetts eyelids clasps shut.

Keith Gaboury graduated with an MFA in poetry from Emerson College and currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is currently working on a collection science fiction/fantasy-themed poems.

Allison Goldin is an artist living in Cambridge. Her work is a collection of spontaneous drawings from the imagination. The most common link throughout her art are the semi-recognizable creatures scattered amongst and bringing together the surrounding doodles. She is currently studying Illustration at The School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.