1. The City
Langston Hughes
In the morning the city
Spreads its wings
Making a song
In stone that sings.
In the evening the city
Goes to bed
Hanging lights Above its head.

2. The Toaster
William Jay Smith
A silver-scaled dragon with jaws flaming red
Sits at my elbow and toasts my bread.
I hand him fat slices, and then, one by one,
He hands them back when he sees they are done.

3. Apartment House - Gerald Raftery
A filing cabinet of human lives
Where people swarm like bees in tunnelled hives,
Each to his own cell in the covered comb,
Identical and cramped -- we call it home.

4. A Dream Deferred
Langston Hughes ( )
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

5. Domestic Quarrel
S McInerney
The walls of the house are paper thin. Lying awake in the pit of the night He hears his parents arguing, And lights a candle stealthily. The world's two halves are closing in A sounding shell; the voices flicker, Knives that violate the night. He lies imprisoned inside a whale, His blind eyes trace its arching ribs. The dark beats down. Somewhere, offstage, ripples of distant thunder. The window frames momentary bleached photographs Cold as a moon landscape. He blows the candle out and waits For sleep or the consummation of rain On the tin roof, the tides of drowning sound.

6. Preludes - T.S. Eliot
The winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o.clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots; The showers beat On broken blinds and chimney-pots, And at the corner of the street A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps. And then the lighting of the lamps.

7. The morning comes to consciousness Of faint stale smells of beer From the sawdust-trampled street With all its muddy feet that press To early coffee-stands. With the other masquerades That time resumes, One thinks of all the hands That are raising dingy shades In a thousand furnished rooms.