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Poet Kevin Carey writes The Times, “My friend and poet Sean Thomas Dougherty called the poems in my new collection Set in Stone “grief songs.” I feel like that’s an accurate description. Many of the poems deal with regret, the penance of the past, some of the joy of getting over. As in my two previous collections, the poems are pretty narrative, telling personal stories about me or people I’ve known over the years. Some about my love of basketball. I guess I can’t get out of my own way when it comes to writing poetry. I do think this is an honest collection and for that reason alone I’m proud of it. It’s let me get to know me better.” https://cavankerrypress.org/product/set-in-stone/

Kevin Carey

The City I Left

The city I left
had miles of barrooms
and Italian bakeries
and clam shacks.

The city I left
had poker machines
(that paid off) in the VFWs
and two race tracks
(horses and dogs) and the kids
there gambled their lunch
money in grade school.

The city I left had
Shirley Ave drug runners
and prostitutes
and strip clubs
from the beach to Squire Road.
The city I left had rotating
ethnic neighborhoods
Italian, Jewish, Puerto Rican,
Laotian.

The city I left
was my mother’s home
until three years ago,
Lancaster Ave at the foot
of the General Edwards Bridge,
the constant rush of traffic
over the green iron grate,
houses packed in between
single car driveways, dogs
barking, seagulls squawking,
sirens around the corner
day and night.

In the city I left, five stops
on the blue line to Boston,
I saw the last of the carnival
pack up its wagons and leave
the three-mile urban beachfront behind.
I saw the crowded barrooms thin
and die along Broadway,
I saw the gangsters
move to the suburbs
to hide out in their ranch houses
and barbecue steaks
and wash their cars
and plant grass over buried bags of cash.

— Kevin Carey

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