Four poems by Mahogany L. Browne

Brooklyn Tongue III

There is a man that cleans the vestibule with a dirty
mop. His patois is heavy like coco bread in milk. He
really isn’t the superintendent, just some man they pay
to mop over the urine and spilled beer. He never speaks
to us when we pass him. He never holds open the door,
even if our arms are heavy with groceries and shopping bags.
So we tuck our smiles in our pockets and limit our answers to
curt head nods. We hold our breath until we make it behind
our apartment door. There we will take a deep pull of Potpourri,
gingerbread and everything that reminds us of home. We stand
and wait for the assault of sticky candy and sour coffee to slide its
odious body back into the building’s main vein, where the man with
the stiff mop waits for Brooklyn to go back to normal.

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