New Jersey to me is Jersey Joe Walcott,
heavyweight boxer who shopped in our Camden
market where I at twelve got to help
choose his beans and kale, hoisting
brown paper bags filled with fruits of the earth
up to his smile and his ponderous arms.

Plus learning that Whitman lived right down the street
and add on to that the time I went
with my father for lunch at the Quality Drug
and he flirted with the counter waitress,
me big eyed, and the time Uncle Sammy
bought me the first cold beer of my life:

Lintonia Restaurant, age fourteen,
in white coat and apron among the men
at the noontime bar. My Atlantic City,
biking the boardwalk at six a.m.,
Pennyland where it actually cost
one penny to play a slot-machine,

noon-times planting our sun-umbrella
digging it into sand and body-
surfing waves to the shell-gravel shallows
and old folks resting on Boardwalk benches
grouped in what they called "pavilions,"
or being pushed in a wicker chair

queasy to think of the guy there pushing
and pony rides and saltwater taffy
and visiting once in Linden, NJ,
a little kid saluted me
as I left a bus in an "officer's" raincoat
making me feel they loved me in New Jersey.