Miguel Piñero and Miguel Algarín, co-founders of the Nuyorican Poet's Café, had made a pact: Piñero would write a poem specifying in detail the arrangements to follow his death, and Algarín, when the time came, would faithfully carry out his friend's instructions:

Just once before I die
I want to climb up on a
tenement sky
to dream my lungs out till
I cry
then scatter my ashes thru
the Lower East Side.

So begins Miguel Piñero's last wishes and paean to Manhattan's Lower East Side. After Miguel Piñero died on June 14, 1988, Algarín led a grand procession in which Piñero's ashes were scattered across his beloved Lower East Side. This is the story of that procession.

Producer: Stacy Abramson / Production assistance: Steve Zeitlin, Dave Isay, and Meagan Howell / Funded by the New York State Council on the Arts and the Corporation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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This piece is available in the following audio formats [2:35 min]:
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		56 kbps Real Audio
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		intro
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