Amy Soricelli Dance to the Music The Bronx is a radio from an open car window. It fills your hair with bits of grass from that park where the kids used to leave beer cans and crack pipes. Now it’s service dogs with little jackets. They have human names and sleep with their paws under their chins. It wasn’t always that. Before I was in high school the Bronx was one flat shade of beige. It was watered-down lunch on paper plates. It was broken textbook spines and nasty margin notes. The Bronx was what you remembered when the dentist said open wide and only fear was left on your tongue. That was mostly how it was. Some summer nights the Bronx was a garbage-can fire and someone’s uncle calling ‘hey flaca’ from his broken stoop across the street. Some summer days the Bronx was one long whistle from Hector when someone brought around a new bike. But the Bronx will always be a random gunshot and Sly and the Family Stone from the front seat. It will always be that.
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