Anthony Borruso

Scorsese Dreamsong

Drifting into taxicab transience,
a windshield’s neon grimace, the love- 

stripped streets of an indisposed city—I look for
what’s graffitied in asphalt’s marginalia: 

dopplerized wail of an ambulance.
Prick of a campaign pin. DeNiro, 

in a wife-beater, aims his finger
at the mirror. No one trusts anyone, whip-pan 

from mob boss to stoolie to starlet
flicking her cigarette into a heart-shaped 

ashtray. And here’s the hero, mohawked
in a studio apartment, scrawling fragments, 

stocking cabinets with non-perishables
in preparation for the race war. A degenerate 

bestiary flickers in a porno theater
as his date squirms in her seat—I’m latched 

by these cells—between heaven and hell,
between close-up and wide shot of two 

rival gangs collapsing on each other
with meat cleavers, fire pokers. Trying 

to smuggle in grace like a shiv in a cake,
tired of the 9 to 5 hiding, I make 

myself into a made man and grope
at the dark—thick black frames and untamed 

eyebrows lead me to a limbo of smart-mouthed
excess; blood-stained, pin-striped, where I’m willing 

to bash a skull in for the sake of subsistence
then pop an Adderall in Tammany Hall 

and wait for the music to sour into propellers
and Gimme Shelter as momma’s Sunday

sauce boils over on the stove.

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Anthony Borruso is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at Florida State University where he is a Poetry Editor for Southeast Review. He is a 2023 Best New Poet and was selected as a finalist for Beloit Poetry Journal's Adrienne Rich Award by Natasha Trethewey. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Beloit Poetry Journal, Pleiades, The Cincinnati Review, The Journal, THRUSH, Gulf Coast, CutBank, Frontier and elsewhere.