Apartment 14B

By: Bruce Morton

Rent control and stubbornness

Kept her there for fifty-seven years

Above Barney’s, or where

Barney’s used to be before 

She and Barney became purple 

Dinosaurs, at the corner of Sixteenth 

Street and Seventh Avenue just north

Of the Village, just north of SoHo just

 West of wherever she was mugged, 

Just south, just east, just west,

Just north of where she just fell,

A brittle spindle of sparrow broken

Stumbling on curbs and cracks,

Blind to everything but home

Where she expired alone, on the floor,

Where she wanted to be, in her nest,

Anchored on the thirteenth floor,

Which we called the fourteenth for luck.

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Bruce Morton divides his time between Montana and Arizona. His second collection, Planet Mort (2024), is available from FootHills Publishing. He was formerly dean at the Montana State University library.