'A Poet Long Ago' stars Steve Schirripa as SONNY and Boris McGiver as MALLOY. In the present day, Sonny, a sanitation worker, and Malloy, a journalist, meet by chance on the street and reminisce about their grammar school days together back in 1970s Brooklyn. Immediately an old wound is opened; flashbacks reveal how the least likely of the pair had an astonishing gift for poetry that was beaten out of him by a narrow-minded father hell-bent on protecting him.