How I Heard the News

(apologies to Alan Dugan)

So I was sitting on the bench
outside the commercial greenness
on the corner of Ditmars and 31st
on a rickety bench that tipped
forward and backward with
the sitters, facing the street
back to another bench facing
the other way, on which there sat
an old be-caned woman of unspecified
Dominican descent,
who muttered angrily,
"They killed an innocent man,
the bastards. He didn't do
anything, and they killed him.
We should kill all the damn
Chinese." The phlegm she spat,
however, missed.