One
Horse flies live here now
buzzing through the front hall
without hats or canes
Ghostly flappers of the Golden Age
dance to the rhythm of their wings
No feet mar the dusty floors
No polish, no paint, no pain
Only the vague memories
The twisted banister leans
at a precarious angle to marble promenade.
scratched and clawed with the years,
the brush strokes of fate and bank foreclosures
Rodents scurrying
as through a grand central station
with no trains
Illustrious architecture
dedicated to nothing
with graveled drive, spiked gate
and wasted dreams
Two
This iron city has lost its grit
rail road turned to condos
and convenience parking
even the ancient Tuck Tape Factory
has tapered down
its bulging middle trimmed
for executive parking
Thirty years ago, the trains
from Newark spread main street in half
with squealing steel brakes and quaking asphalt,
leaving the scents of grease and sweating brakemen,
and perfumed silk ladies going on to downtown Paterson
And sometimes, standing here waiting for a bus,
I still smell them,
caught in the whisper of air
on a hot Summer’s day,
to savor and sip
like fading wine.
Three
It is the clop of hooves on Cobblestone
I first hear in the morning
coming in with the peeping sun
the horse stops, the hunched back man
lifts his pole to snuff out the flame
on each high lamp
the smell of it lingers in the dew,
a captive piece of darkness
mingling morning with night
He moves on with the clamor of hooves
and the smell of manure
My eyes are captive, too,
caught on the ceiling,
painting each movement from memory
needing never to see the twist
of his morning smile
Like knowing the face of death
when it comes,
knowing it is my flame he will put out
someday.
Four
Were they wrens or sparrows
that waddled the narrow
space between water and land
Battery Park, an island in the mist,
an Avalon through which\
many pass and fail to see
Liberty Island shrouded
gloriously among the sailing ships
that scratch so close
in their crooked paths
And Governor’s Island
upon which an aunt once worked
And that mysterious nameless island
to the west
whose footbridge
reaches all the way to New Jersey
Yes, there are ways to reach that shore
though the mists seem to never end,
a wren, a sparrow, the male with his pretty head
speaking too much, waiting in the mists
until all the ships come home.
Five
We saw it on a Winter's day,
darting between foam and snow,
like a fourth Musketeer with foil-beak
slashing out survival between the waves,
its peg leg as nimble as a Pirate's,
hopping to the beat of the sea,
leaning upon nothing,
learning to defy all that is Darwin and Freud—
perhaps all sand pipers shall have one leg someday,
pecking at sand crab egg patches like thieves,
hobbling with war wounds through Winter's worst,
like Napoleon’s soldiers,
stronger upon that one leg,
than most of us with two.
Six
You escaped like a squirrel squiggling
through a hole in a fence,
the mad dogs of faith snapping at your tail,
their bone of contention always one of witch craft,
you, who knew too much too soon about their lives,
rhyming it all,
curling predictions up in pat phrases
you almost predicted me,
before the cradle,
pacing passed the delivery room,
book of poems in your hand,
as if you had ever read them,
or those I wrote later as a child,
reading only the footnotes to history,
your eyes shimmering over Nostradamous as if he were you.
Seven
Crazy tiles intrigues
me with old polish,
the scuffs like writing
I cannot read at three,
me, between each curve of letter,
each end of sentence,
a boy playing boy-games alone,
mother sewing after hard day at work,
a rare occasion of me and she
and the dull sunday light
streaming through deep grey clouds and heavy curtains,
her fingers, moving, moving up and down,
used to small spaces,
she says her eyes will go
if she keeps up with her job,
fitting piece into place
just like this,
with me,
marching up and down before her,
saying, "Look! Look! I'm in the band!"
Baseball bat for a bugle,
unfolded hanger for a sword,
each taller than I am,
each scraping new marks into the tile as I move,
each refusing to bring mother's eyes up from her work,
back and forth,
up and down,
stitched her and there,
I wave the sword,
bring the bugle and sword together to my lips—
and suddenly,
as bat falls to the hieroglyphic tiles,
I become a sword-swallower,
vomiting blood.
Eight
She took me on the bus to buy new shoes,
mad mother with her prayer book
tucked inside her purse,
bank bills marking the holier page,
her arm under mine—
the seven year old man
who needed white for communion,
suit already gathering dust in the closet,
tight at the shoulders,
and we, climbing down the rubber-ridged steps to the store,
sign saying: Hospital wear.
It smelled of hospital, too,
clean death folded with the linen,
mother telling the angry man we needed white for church,
and he, looking at me with folded brows saying
"Women's wear maybe," shoving shoe after ill-fitting shoe, me,
holding my breath, hoping they might stretch,
taking the last pair though later,
I walked down the church aisle in line with my peers,
dressed in solid white and bleeding feet.
Nine
He hasn't heard the clack in years,
the smack of glass on glass,
or the dull throb of thumb
striking a plump round surface
like shooting planets
through a dirt solar system
a thick wooden peg in its
center for a sun
But standing on the street
he stops, cocks his head,
for the subtly of childhood
prancing between the honking horns.
Ten
Alice dreamed of Grandpa's Ghost
a day before she died,
she told the dream from her
hospital bed, laughing,
her bright eyes dulled
by medication,
her sharp nails pealing
their paint, red chips
falling onto the white
sheet like hardened
blood to snow.
She said he had stepped
out from behind a stone,
his grey, carved face
smiling in one of its
rare ways, beaming
slightly from some
odd illumination,
an angle of light
for which she could not
see the source
And his large hands waving
towards her, as if through
a gate, the wounds long
healed from hammer blows
and saw cuts that had
long weathered them
in life, from too many
houses built or boats sailed,
waving for her to come along
as if there was
no tomorrow.
Eleven
She faded at 90
like the rugs she used to beat in the upstairs hall,
dusty memories popping out
over the evening meal in loose threads—
and at night,
alone in her room with her pain,
she was ten again,
crying out for her mother.
Twelve
She was always too tall,
limbs like a tree trunk
standing next to me on the corner
waiting for the light to change,
school books heavy with brutal study,
determined to be president,
four kids and a husband
stealing her dreams and ambition,
but not the anger.
Thirteen
I laughed at his eighth grade romance,
bundle of hormones
ranting about the color of her eyes,
his whole life swimming in them
like a tadpole waiting to lose his tail
Fourteen
She handled knitting needles like knives,
seated each night in the corner of the room
where Grandpa died,
jabbing at an endless afghan
till it grew down to her knees,
like a beard, full of greens and grays,
slowly taking the size and shape of a man.
Fifteen
My mother used to come here to buy shorts,
the scuffed knees of summer too
expensive to keep on patching
The old institutions of Department stores
fragmented into tiny vestiges
of their former glory
Grants into junk stores
Woolworth into racks of cheap cloth,
Sterns into used appliances
And along the street a thousand
little island shops of too
bright fabric fluttering
mismatched, patterned shirts
and dresses, and bargain basement
luxuries from Hong Kong & Taiwan
to which the Spanish women flocked
clucking their tongues at their
lack of choices and suspect quality
my mother among them, fingering
each item like a treasure, looking
for something she'd never find.
