162 City poems

we cut down 115th street for a quicker stroll past the pastor's house, vacant lot, liquor store. buses pointing out the hood & back. the route every morning goes by the liquor store. the loose Philly blunts and hard & dry. the sour mouth washed away by a dull gulp of liquor. store a honey bun in your fat back pocket. pray nobody notices your awkward walk. this liquor store sees stumbling often. out front the garish stickers fluoresce on the wire windows like winos with liquor store bottles. a small weapon sits behind the counter hidden by the cigarettes & candy small enough to steal. when the liquor store is locked up the rolling metals make the window a pastoral, part of our natural habitat. behold the liquor store: the sugar waters, the Ziploc bag of coins & Nate's tongue the color of loose pennies in the liquor store.

As the stores close, a winter light opens air to iris blue, glint of frost through the smoke grains of mica, salt of the sidewalk. As the buildings close, released autonomous feet pattern the streets in hurry and stroll; balloon heads drift and dive above them; the bodies aren't really there. As the lights brighten, as the sky darkens, a woman with crooked heels says to another woman while they step along at a fair pace, "You know, I'm telling you, what I love best is life. I love life! Even if I ever get to be old and wheezy—or limp! You know? Limping along?—I'd still ... "

As apparent as the rest, the asphalt cracks are crowded with yellow weeds, the rust goes beyond its bleeding color, and the lot's rails, battered by cars, cast larger bars by noon. On one side of the market someone painted a row of flower pots, hanging geraniums for the locals who must now go across town. As apparent as the rest, El Tigre walks upright, wears a tiny sombrero and sarape, and pushes a grocery cart full of food. His painted stripes are starting to flake like the bounty he wheels for the families drifting into the parking lot off 3rd Street and next to the train station still waiting to the retrofitted for the big one.

The country lies flat, expressionless as the face of a stranger. Not one hillock shelters a buried bone. The city: a scene thin as a theater backdrop, where no doors open, no streets extend beyond the view from the corner. Only the railroad embankment is high, shaggy with grass. Only the freight, knuckling a red sun under its wheels, drags familiar box-car shapes down long perspectives of childhood meals and all crossings at sunset. With a look deep as the continent, with the casual greeting of those who will meet again, it bestrides the viaduct. Its span is the span of trestles above mountain gorges, its roar the echo of streams still wearing away stone.

Turning the corner, we discovered it just as the old wrought-iron lamps went on— a quiet, tree-lined street, only one block long resting between the noisy avenues. The streetlamps splashed the shadows of the leaves across the whitewashed brick, and each tall window glowing through the ivy-decked facade promised lives as perfect as the light. Walking beneath the trees, we counted all the high black doors of houses bolted shut. And yet we could have opened any door, entered any room the evening offered. Or were we deluded by the strange equations of the light, the vagrant wind searching the trees, that we believed this brief conjunction of our separate lives was real? It seemed that moment lingered like a ghost, a flicker in the air, smaller than a moth, a curl of smoke flaring from a match, haunting a world it could not touch or hear. There should have been a greeting or a sign, the smile of a stranger, something beyond the soft refusals of the summer air and children trading secrets on the steps. Traffic bellowed from the avenue. Our shadows moved across the street’s long wall, and at the end what else could I have done but turn the corner back into my life?

In bed as the machinery of morning begins, indistinguishable the subterranean turbines of the A train from the jet engine as it gins the clouds, rips and reseams the length of dungaree on its way to Pittsburgh (with the terrible and subtle cargoes, with ashes and a cat under the seat) from the pulleys of the service elevators from the baffled sound across the alley of the hand-iron press and the sewing machine motors whirring bobbins that stitch together the hot properties of Seoul and the suburbs and the idiot village of Chelm, needle the veronica and the Buddha robe and the sateen for spring. I looked over at her. Her skin a warp of Christ and a weft of meat. All night she had hauled me and the boy and the smoky, feckless men I was across the fens and stretches of mesquite through the tunnels and delivered me to my misery and the laborious knots of the sheets I wound myself in. And she was exhausted from Eros and swollen from anger. She could stand to put on a few pounds. I could see it in her ribs. Before I would marry my restlessness to her terror, before the crushes and wages could be made into our equity, before the endlessness would end in spinning jennies and sleaze and the noise of a fleet of vehicles with tinted windows testing the evacuation routes, I would cut, then peel, then dice, then caramelize some onions before she wasted away to nothing.

That bummy smell you meet off the escalator at Civic Center, right before you turn onto McAllister, seems to dwell there, disembodied, on a shelf above the sidewalk. The mad old lady with lizard skin bent double over her shopping cart and trailing a cloud of pigeons is nowhere in sight. A pile of rags here and there but no one underneath. An invisible shrine commemorating what? Old mattresses and dusty flesh, piss and puked-on overcoats, what? Maybe death, now there’s a smell that likes to stick around. You used to find it in downtown Sally Anns and once in a hospital cafeteria, only faintly, after a bite of poundcake. But here it lives, cheek by jowl with McDonald’s, still robust after a night of wind with its own dark little howdy-do for the drunks and cops, social workers and whores, or the elderly couple from Zurich leafing cooly through their guidebook.

Is this the river East I heard?— Where the ferries, tugs and sailboats stirred And the reaching wharves from the inner land Ourstretched, like the harmless receiving hand— And the silvery tinge that sparkles aloud Like the brilliant white demons, which a tide has towed From the rays of the morning sun Which it doth ceaselessly shine upon. But look at the depth of the drippling tide The dripples, reripples like the locusts astride; As the boat turns upon the silvery spread It leaves—strange—a shadow dead. And the very charms from the reflective river And from the stacks of the floating boat— There seemeth the quality ne’er to dissever Like the ruffles from the mystified smoke.

I saw your picture in the 79th street station. You said you’d be interested in any comments I might have on the condition of the station Mr. Fanelli, there is a lot of debris in the 79th street station that makes it unpleasant to wait in for more than a few minutes. The station could use a paint job and maybe new speakers so you could understand the delay announcements that are always being broadcast. Mr. Fanelli—there are a lot of people sleeping in the 79th street station & it makes me sad to think they have no home to go to. Mr. Fanelli, do you think you could find a more comfortable place for them to rest? It’s pretty noisy in the subway, especially all those express trains hurtling through every few minutes, anyway when the trains are in service. I have to admit, Mr. Fanelli, I think the 79th street station’s in pretty bad shape & sometimes at night as I toss in my bed I think the world’s not doing too good either, & I wonder what’s going to happen, where we’re headed, if we’re headed anywhere, if we even have heads. Mr. Fanelli, do you think if we could just start with the 79th street station & do what we could with that then maybe we could, you know, I guess, move on from there? Mr. Fanelli, when I saw your picture & the sign asking for suggestions I thought, if you really wanted to get to the bottom of what’s wrong then maybe it was my job to write to you: Maybe you’ve never been inside the 79th street station because you’re so busy managing the 72nd street & 66th street stations, maybe you don’t know the problems we have at 79th—I mean the dirt & frequent delays & the feeling of total misery that pervades the place. Mr. Fanelli, are you reading this far in the letter or do you get so many letters every day that you don’t have time to give each one the close attention it desires? Or am I the only person who’s taken up your invitation to get in touch & you just don’t have enough experience to know how to respond? I’m sorry I can’t get your attention Mr. Fanelli because I really believe if you ask for comments then you ought to be willing to act on them—even if ought is too big a word to throw around at this point. Mr. Fanelli I hope you won’t think I’m rude if I ask you a personal question. Do you get out of the office much? Do you go to the movies or do you prefer sports—or maybe quiet evenings at a local restaurant? Do you read much, Mr. Fanelli? I don’t mean just Gibbons and like that, but philosophy— have you read much Hanna Arendt or do you prefer a more ideological perspective? I think if I understood where you are coming from, Mr. Fanelli, I could write to you more cogently, more persuasively. Mr. Fanelli, do you get out of the city at all—I mean like up to Bear Mountain or out to Montauk? I mean do you notice how unpleasant the air is in the 79th street station—that we could use some cooling or air-filtering system down there? Mr. Fanelli, do you think it’s possible we could get together and talk about these things in person? There are a few other points I’d like to go over with you if I could get the chance. Things I’d like to talk to you about but that I’d be reluctant to put down on paper. Mr. Fanelli, I haven’t been feeling very good lately and I thought meeting with you face to face might change my mood, might put me into a new frame of mind. Maybe we could have lunch? Or maybe after work? Think about it, Mr. Fanelli.

Earth has not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will: Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!