in parentheses

Yevgeniy Levitskiy has received a B.A. in English-Education from Brooklyn College. His writing has been published in Green Briar Review, Smoking Poet and elsewhere. His forthcoming publications include The Books They Gave Me (Free Press/Simon & Schuster) and Everyday Other Things. He is currently at work on a middle-grade novel.

Panhandling

Q train
at five pm
local time,

it’s the yokel’s time
to share the
rush hour
dash from
Manhattan
to Brooklyn

with foreign songs
of solace and rhymes
from his wooden
guitar that shines

songs that weave
tales of woe to
passengers that
don’t dare
to care, but

the yokel plays
for dimes and
pleads for your time,

then he finds your gaze
and steps to sing
you about his-

story and his side
of the story.