Night Walk, Lower East Side
︎︎︎ Joseph Massey
︎ July 19, 2026
A blue neon cross
flickers in the window
of a Lutheran church
on a graffitied corner
in Chinatown.
That’s the anchor—
I hold it in mind.
Not for holiness,
but for symmetry.
A compass
to guide me
through the city’s
surging frequencies.
Darkness flowering
out of an alley;
traffic glint
on barbed wire.
flickers in the window
of a Lutheran church
on a graffitied corner
in Chinatown.
That’s the anchor—
I hold it in mind.
Not for holiness,
but for symmetry.
A compass
to guide me
through the city’s
surging frequencies.
Darkness flowering
out of an alley;
traffic glint
on barbed wire.
Joseph Massey is the author of Decades: Selected Poems, and he publishes a newsletter, Dispatches from the Basement. He lives in Upstate New York.
Also by Joseph: Enclosures