Elegy for Jim Cory

Above a horse cemetery
on a wall that is no longer there

were faces meant to be immortalized.
Faces of literary giants in art deco style

whether apropos or not including
Shaw, Joyce, Dickinson, Frost

and I would stare at the mural as I would steam
dozens of lattes and cappuccinos for minimum wage

and on smoke breaks in Rittenhouse Square
I would listen to Jim tell me of a mythical Philly

from the 80’s and 90’s not knowing that the twenty teens
would one day become ancient history

that the bookstore would be gutted
replaced by another expensive star

that the wall of literary giants would no longer be there
and those moments under trees fed

by bones of colonial steeds would transform into memories.
Yet somehow, somewhere he’s still there,

perhaps as a kind of bird flying between canopies
like a train cutting through rays of light on the landscape.

*

Sean Lynch is a writer and editor who lives in Philadelphia. His latest poetry collection, Halo Nest: Poems on Grief is available for purchase here. Previous books are, the city of your mind (Whirlwind Press, 2013), Broad Street Line (Moonstone Press, 2016), 100 Haiku (Moonstone Press, 2017), and On Violence (Radical Paper Press, 2019). He is the founding editor of Serotonin Press and has been the editor of various magazines, journals, anthologies, and books, including Rocky Wilson’s The Last Bus to Camden, Chidi Ezeobi’s Remind the World: Poems from Prison, and Beyond the White Stone Lions by Lamont Steptoe. He’s also worked for non-profit literary organizations such as Moonstone Arts Center and the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association.