Famous Persons #3

The Human Touch of Fiorello H. Laguardia

Once, during a newspaper strike,
Firoello read the comics aloud
on the radio to the people of New York.

And never had they made such
perfect sense to us, as they tickled
from the fat man and across the airwaves.

*

But it’s so hard to understand color;
it disappears so easily from the pages
of our dictionaries. They are just words
that once we made with our mouths.

There’s this thing in New York
called local color, and unless you believe
in it, there’s no way that you’ll ever
close your eyes and still see black ink.