Lost Weekend Via The Coney Island Bound D Train
for David Francis

Pre-Halloween track work—
The MTA’s “Lost Weekend” journey.
The D train to Coney Island,
an N train in drag.

A slo-mo freak show
behind smeared plexiglass.
Shanties moon the banks
of the puke-green creek.
In garbage dump forests,
trees of heaven
strip in sunlight.
Can-crushed cars
in assorted positions—
an orgy of Skittles’ color.
Grungy trash on crabgrass
does the “full monty.”
Nature falls in love
with graffiti sludge.

“Life is beautiful,”
a clichéd haiku meltdown—
“enjoy the journey.”

Photography © Ira Joel Haber

Photography © Ira Joel Haber

Patricia Carragon loves cupcakes, chocolate, cats, haiku, and the borough of Brooklyn. Her publication credits include BigCityLit, CLWN WR, Clockwise Cat, Danse Macabre, Home Planet News, Inertia, Lips, Levure littéraire, The Long Island Quarterly, Mad Hatters’ Review, The Toronto Quarterly, and others. She is the author of Journey to the Center of My Mind (Rogue Scholars Press, 2005) and Urban Haiku and More (Fierce Grace Press, 2010). She hosts the Brooklyn-based Brownstone Poets and is the editor-in-chief of its annual anthology. Patricia is a member of Brevitas, a group fiercely dedicated to short poems.

Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in USA and Europe and he has had 9 one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum and The Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Since 2007 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 160 on line and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Pollock-Krasner grants, the Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grant and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists’ Fellowship Inc. He currently teaches art to retired public school teachers at The United Federation of Teachers program in Brooklyn.