PHILLY MEMOIR POEM

Driving Back to the Great Northeast

With an 8-track tape of the Beatles playing

Photo by Wongpear on Pixabay. Edit by Mark Tulin

In the year 1970,
I was in the passenger’s seat
of my cousin’s white Mustang.
We were coming back
from the Spectrum
where the Sixers beat the Braves,
driving over the train tracks
on Delaware Avenue
amid the sounds of bricks thumping
from white-wall tires,
and the dank smell
of the river
swimming with rats.

“Listen to this song,”
said my twenty-two-year-old cousin.
He pushed an 8-track tape
into the player
and the Beatles called it
“Paperback Writer.”

I kept asking my cousin to play
it again and again.
The song was about a desperate writer
trying to convince a publisher
that he could write a paperback —
pleading to give him a chance.