162 City poems

There are rooftops made of cloud remnants gathered by a trader dabbling in car parts and burlap At night, I dive onto the breeze fermenting above the dirt and dream that I am a crocodile a tin of shoe polish, an audience of two In the morning, before the smallest yawn becomes a noodle, I am offered a ribbon of yellow smoke I opt for fuzzy rocks and clawed water and, of course, the perishable window I am one of the last computer chain errors to be illuminated I tell you there are rooftops on which the moon stops being a cold jewel And one by one the mountains begin their descent from the chambers of a lost book

I. I came then to the city of my brethren. Not Carthage, not Alexandria, not London. The wide blue river cutting through the stone Arrowy and cool lay down beside her, And the hazy and shining sea lay in the offing. Ferries, pouring the foam before them, sliding Into her groaning timbers, rang and rang; And the chains tumbled taut in the winches. Upstream the matted tugs in the heavy water, Their soiling smoke unwrapped by the salt wind, Footed with snowy trampling and snowy sound. On tethers, pointing the way of the tide, The crusted freighters swung with their sides gushing. On evening’s ship pointing northward, A golden sailor at sunset stood at the bow, As aloft in the strands a tramcar with tiny clanging Slowly soared over, far upward and humming still. II. Not Athens, Alexandria, Vienna or London. And evening vast and clean above the city Washed the high storeys with sea-light, with a silken Sky-tint on the planes and the embrasures: The clump of crags and glitter sinking eastward With the slow world, the shadow-lipping shores, Pale after-conflagration of the air. On terraces, by windows of tiredness, The eyes dropped from that glow to the dusk atremble, Alive with its moving atomic monotone: There the hot taxis at the pounding corner Fitted their glossy flanks and shifted, waiting, And the girls went by with wavering tall walking, Their combed heads nodding in the evening: The hour of shops closing, the cocktail hour, Lighting desire and cigarettes and lighting The strange lamps on the streaming avenue.

It ends badly, this glass of wine, before you drink it you have to drink a prior glass, before you sip you gulp, before you chug the bottle you pour it down your throat, before we lie together naked, we divorce, before we rest we grow old, it ends in chaos, but it is delicious, when we wake it is the past, we are the faces staring from the high lit window, the unmet lovers, the rivals who do not exist, united in a radiance that will not fade at dawn.

515 Madison Avenue door to heaven? portal stopped realities and eternal licentiousness or at least the jungle of impossible eagerness your marble is bronze and your lianas elevator cables swinging from the myth of ascending I would join or declining the challenge of racial attractions they zing on (into the lynch, dear friends) while everywhere love is breathing draftily like a doorway linking 53rd with 54th the east-bound with the west-bound traffic by 8,000,000s o midtown tunnels and the tunnels, too, of Holland where is the summit where all aims are clear the pin-point light upon a fear of lust as agony’s needlework grows up around the unicorn and fences him for milk- and yoghurt-work when I see Gianni I know he’s thinking of John Ericson playing the Rachmaninoff 2nd or Elizabeth Taylor taking sleeping-pills and Jane thinks of Manderley and Irkutsk while I cough lightly in the smog of desire and my eyes water achingly imitating the true blue a sight of Manahatta in the towering needle multi-faceted insight of the fly in the stringless labyrinth Canada plans a higher place than the Empire State Building I am getting into a cab at 9th Street and 1st Avenue and the Negro driver tells me about a $120 apartment “where you can’t walk across the floor after 10 at night not even to pee, cause it keeps them awake downstairs” no, I don’t like that “well, I didn’t take it” perfect in the hot humid morning on my way to work a little supper-club conversation for the mill of the gods you were there always and you know all about these things as indifferent as an encyclopedia with your calm brown eyes it isn’t enough to smile when you run the gauntlet you’ve got to spit like Niagara Falls on everybody or Victoria Falls or at least the beautiful urban fountains of Madrid as the Niger joins the Gulf of Guinea near the Menemsha Bar that is what you learn in the early morning passing Madison Avenue where you’ve never spent any time and stores eat up light I have always wanted to be near it though the day is long (and I don’t mean Madison Avenue) lying in a hammock on St. Mark’s Place sorting my poems in the rancid nourishment of this mountainous island they are coming and we holy ones must go is Tibet historically a part of China? as I historically belong to the enormous bliss of American death

There’s a shadow over the city the light, as usual, framing and erasing Just say you dream fires each night smoothing each collapsing page from the throat talking in a series of measures in the high desert the perfect life in a series of measured gestures an invitation to see the world from a bridge that burns in the next night

the ideal city building itself in his brain. Is this mile magnificent? He’s lived here a while, but the mile feels unreal. Robinson’s training himself to act blasé. Do museums amuse me? Yes, but not today. Would he like to be in one? Of course. Why not? An object of value with canvas wings, an unchanging face in a gilt frame, arranged— thoughtless, guilt-free, & preserved for eternity. Robinson doesn’t want to be exceptional. He knows he is. He wants to be perceived exceptional. Trains plunge by, steam rising from the grates. Sing, muse! of a man ill-met at the Met. A man on his lunch break, heading for a heartbreak, a break-up with Time. A break-up with time? Feeling filled with ice, the way you chill a glass, Robinson passes the National Academy. He craves a sense of belonging, not to always be longing. To be standing in a doorway, incredibly kissable, not waiting at the four-way, eminently missable. Is this mile magnanimous? He wants it unanimous: that this is his kind of town— up & down & including Brooklyn. The sky is clearing, but the isolation sticks. Robinson’s not sure what a camera obscura is for, but he thinks he should have his portrait done with one. Faces blur by as he heads toward the Frick. Something used to photograph the obscure.

Here or there hundreds of them, phantom-like, bobbing in place at street corners, then lifting their knees suddenly and leaping into the densest, loudest traffic (of briefest trajectories, of shortest views), in transit yet at ease, breathing, loping, like bearers of distance and pure direction, darting half naked out of nowhere and where, where in the world are they running to? swift and solitary, silent beings who, should you now step into the path, have dodged away, or, if you raise a hand to stay them to speak, immediately are gone: who are these runners who create in their gliding such fine, singular spaces among the street’s vociferous jargons? —as if each one were a still, wordless message or question one would answer if one could grasp it, this one, that one, sliding past, going away, while you stand there, your hand raised to no purpose, your hidden heart rejoicing that the quick heel won’t soon, won’t ever, be overtaken, although you, as you have longed to, suddenly disburden yourself and follow follow.

Placa/Rollcall, 1980, by Charles “Chaz” Bojórquez If the city was a body, graffiti would tell us where it hurts. — Charles “Chaz” Bojórquez And this block would shout, “Nos diste un chingaso , cabrón. Mira esta cara rota, these baton-cracked ribs, this black and blue street dizzy con gente: blades, kiki, larry, snow, enrique, connie, 
elton, king, david, kelly, jeff, ratón, chaz , los de aquí, los de abajo. This roll call won’t be silenced, not by glock, not by chokehold. This is our temple of runes, our tomb — its glyphic curve and flow, calligraphic code writ acrylic. This, our relic, our scroll unrolled in catacombs, our flecks of subtext still buzzing después de que vayamos con La Pelona. ¡ qué lucha, loco ! Ven, baile con nosotros to the aerosol’s maraca y hiss, al punk en español’s furious sweat. Hang your head out the window y dale un grito tan lleno de duende that it cracks the pavement, summons our dead to dinner. Turn the tonal kaleidoscope. Then pause, catch your breath, so you don’t miss the illegible moment where all the mystery lives. There, de-cypher that!”

Detroit – where the weak are killed and eaten. – T-shirt slogan, circa 1990 . . . the 33 year old woman . . . leapt to her death . . . from a crowded bridge that . . . connects Detroit . . . with its famous island park, Belle Isle. She was trying to escape the 300-pound man whose car she had accidentally bumped into. According to police, the man had smashed her car windows with a tire iron, dragged her from the vehicle – stripping off most of her clothes in the process – slammed her against the hood of her car and pounded her with his fists. Deletha Word . . . could not swim . . . She jumped into the water 40 feet below. – James Ricci , Los Angeles Times [August 31, 1995] The road to the afterlife – There was . . . a river that had only one bridge across it . . . This bridge was guarded by a dog that jumped at souls and made many of them fall into the river and drown. – Bruce G. Trigger , The Huron: Farmers of the North Not really a river at all, but a handshake between two Great Lakes, Huron stretching to embrace Erie in its green-gray grasp. You stitch the liquid boundary of a city dismantling itself, bricks unmortared, spires sagging, burnt out structures razed to open field. Prairies returning here, foxtails and chicory, Queen Anne’s lace sways; tumbleweeds amble down Woodward Avenue, blow past fire hydrants, storefronts and rusted Cadillacs. You are the mirror into which we plunge. Towers of a stillborn renaissance bend to admire their vacant beauty; automobiles built in Mexico catch the chrome reflection of your waves. They speed across the bridge to the island whose willows spill their tears against your breast. Darkness closes our eyes; the park empties, bridge bears a chain of headlights. Perfume of exhaust drifts over your blackened currents; cars jostle for their place in line. Not the fist of one man but the sucker punch of a city taking scrappy pride in its bruised countenance. One bumper kisses another like gunshot; the town explodes. You swallow the blood of a woman’s shattered cheekbone, pressed to metal hood, scorched by engine’s heat.Who wanna buy some of dis bitch – she got to pay fo’ my car.

The wind dying, I find a city deserted, except for crowds of people moving and standing. Those standing resemble stories, like stones, coal from the death of plants, bricks in the shape of teeth. I begin now to write down all the places I have not been— starting with the most distant. I build houses that I will not inhabit.