Not Being From New York

[Mwaba don]

 
Not being from New York I can’t say for sure
but I hear there’s an up-charge for whiskey, neat,
in bars with women with wheat- colored hair
and coral lipstick; wearing dresses, all black
with no sleeves and, mostly too, no shoulders
and cut high to show tiny thighs not touching,
and they say it’s because of no ice,
the up-charge, in whiskey bars with booming music
by and large too loud played by DJs with blue-dyed
hair and silver high-gauge studs nearly touching
their thin, beskulled t-shirts, black and stained
with gin, costing more than a week’s pay
plus dry-cleaning and delivery.
 
Here we mostly drink beer in cold dark bottles,
the Midwest flat and arid, needing rain
yet only dry thunderstorms come,  not a splat
of wet, just bright lights and loud booms;
not even the cows are impressed.
Grazing, they stand in open fields,  in winter drink
water from icy troughs,  their black coats
shaggy then and full, beautiful like furs walking
down  fifth avenue only alive;
when I take the axe to break the ice
I wear a black woolen coat with wide shoulders
that belonged to my father;
it hangs thick and heavy, like a familiar embrace.
 

      Nice topic and title. It is good to learn about new york and where you are from.
You make very good descriptions of images and the comparisons between the two places is a nice style of writing.
Whats the other place?