Memories of Brooklyn
I was there.
I could almost reach out and touch the distance
the delicate balance between us, between the beating heart
seated there, and the eyes of the man…
the becoming of, the partaking of having been in the past
tense born other than myself wondering what I would
be doing standing there on the street corner
on Kings Highway at 4 o’clock in the morning holding a plastic bag
with my left hand in my back pocket
(at that time of night)
Another nervous me-looking lady is waiting for a bus,
her face resembles the fragile consciousness
beating in my head, which wondered
only a moment ago
why it could take half a lifetime
for the price of eggs to drop 50 cents
while the cost of everything always seems to go up.
Strange this short distance transmigration of ethos.
They wonder if I am as much in them
as they are in me
and perhaps feel the same sensitive pulse of an alien being
coursing through the veins somewhere
between the wrist and the elbow
‘Are you working?’ the voice at the window of my cab
inquires.
‘Where you going?’ (can’t be too careful nowadays)
‘How much to Flatlands and 56th?’
For 6 bucks I shudder all the way at the thought
of a knife in my back
and the hungry man climbing out of the night
into the backseat, into the perfect environment
of my rock-n-roll taxi,
a hideous monster demanding all my money,
leaving me dead for a hundred bucks
and a half-smoked pack of Camel light cigarettes
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
American Woman
She crosses her legs
and pulls on her dress down over her knees
as she sits on the subway to Brooklyn
reading the Old Testament.
Jesus dominates her thinking
to whom she is wedded,
an immaculate virgin
pruning herself for the new messiah.
Not only are her legs crossed
but her neck, hanging from a crucifix
reveals ever so faint slight white
patch of pale skin concealing
the mystery of her flesh.
