My Yoko Ono Moment
for Nick Twemlow
It’s annoying
how much
junk mail
comes through
the slot
& accumulates
at the foot
of the stairs
mostly menus
from restaurants
in the neighborhood
endlessly
coming through
the slot
despite the sign
we put on the door:
No Advertisements
No Solicitors
One night
I scoop up the whole pile
on my way out
(as I do periodically)
& dump it
in the trash can
on the corner
of West Broadway & Spring
just as Yoko Ono
happens to be strolling
through SoHo
with a male companion
She watches me
toss the menus
then turns to her friend
& says, “I guess
no one reads those.”
Copyright @ 2014 by David Trinidad. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on June 6, 2014.
“At a dinner for the poet Nick Twemlow after he read at Columbia College, Yoko Ono came up in conversation. I told my anecdote about her, then said, ‘I guess it’s not much of an anecdote.’ But Nick liked it, and that prompted me to turn it into a poem and dedicate it to him.”
—David Trinidad
David Trinidad
David Trinidad earned a BA in English from California State University and an MFA in creative writing from City University of New York, Brooklyn College.