Brooklyn is…
Brooklyn is moving from Manhattan to Parkside
circa ’56, Erasmus Hall with Bobby fisher and Barbara Streisand
and Garfield’s cafeteria on Ocean and Flatbush Avenues,
Brooklyn is Boro Park and Bay Ridge and Brooklyn Heights
and Linda Zuckerman and brainy Miriam Finegold
my first love my second my tenth my next to last
exit from Flatbush Billards to Saint Marks and the Bouwerie,
Brooklyn is my dad standing by the King’s Highway station
reading a newspaper he found in the garbage around the corner
at OTB,
Brooklyn is an old phone book in pencil
smudged around the edges like a halo of dust
but still readable. oh
when will those Manhattan days and Brooklyn nights at my mother’s house
disappear forever. No, never
At one time, there were more Jews in Brooklyn than the State of Israel
Rheingold Beer and the Brooklyn Navy Yard
where my father worked as a machinist during the war,
I still have his quaint catalog of Starret tools somewhere in the boydum,
Brooklyn is a day’s pay for driving a taxi all night
delivering drugs to Red Hook and Brownsville
from Bedford Stuyvesant to Manhattan Beach, over the bridge
in Sheapshead Bay.
Brooklyn was the last stop to Coney Island when I was a kid
on the Lower East Side when Hoboken was the other side of the world.
I am flying over Brooklyn now in my dreams,
they are all gone, Erica in the park and pizza at the King’s Highway station.
08.13.03