On the slipper, city slicker

Sometime in those teenage years his heart turned to the city sewers. To all-night everything, all the time, to angry mobs of people. He started riding city buses and spending mornings drinking dark coffee, reading papers from New York. That guy.

Into a building on one of the country’s oldest anchor streets he moved all his stuff. At night there were walks past Hooker Harvey’s, where working girls turned tricks for cash in the fryer’s glow. Past that crack alleys and dark parks for shooting up. He loved it.

Four years later he spent a summer staring at the prairie sky. Off the balcony the clouds exploded into shining silver stars. Finally the empty fields got the credit due. Then off he took to spend one year in the Asian suburbs.

At first the lights burned bright, seemed urban in their newness. But the town soon shrunk down and he missed all the angry people. So he rides the train some thirty-seven minutes to Seoul, and in the sewers there, he finds them.