Coney Island

In the dead of New Year’s afternoon the city’s hangover is guised in fog. In Coney Island the rides recover from a long, amusing summer.  The sea seems tired today, struggles to keep up the old routine.  Flowers lie scattered on the sand like a sailor’s obituary, a path of yellow petals leading up to the pier.  Yet here, the Boardwalk already out of sight, it’s the day people are fishing for crabs. A couple has brought camping chairs and vodka against the cold. From a littel distance a young girl is watching her friends preparing the first throw, wiring chunks of port and chicken to the trap’s bottom. She’s thrown her arms around herself, doesn’t wear socks. The color of her toes is a darker red than that of her polish. Three times she says, “I’m leaving, but stays with her nose turned up. Then in sudden succession traps are retrieved, crabs are torn from meat, tossed in plastic buckets. A boy in a blue, electric racer drives from pail to pail sending the standings to the Big Boss on his candy cell. Someone laughs.  The young girl shrieks and a man in a green coat yells, Watch your nose!