Timescape: Grand Street Illusion
Timescape: Grand Street Illusion
I don't believe in ghosts
On the sidewalk, out in daylight
Being alive like the rest of us
Walking around with our needs
Memories, then a boy runs away from
His sister and for a moment
He is my brother's ghost
An unexpected beckoning
To the way we used to live
We used to live
Here, wild urchins in captivity. We ran
Often but we didn't escape. We didn't
Know there were parallel worlds
To the one we lived in
Where a pot of geranium
Is always behind the window's
Iron bars, where someone is
Always contemplating
The vagaries of freedom
While hanging the wash
On the line across
The tenement courtyard
Or smoking under the stairwell
Awaiting the all clear
Signal for flight
There's a certain splendor
In his gait when he runs
That I almost reach out
My hand to see if he's
Ethereal and not
Just my imagination
Or sunlight tricks
The sister calls for him to stop
But he doesn't, he sprints
Against the red flashing
Stop light across
Ludlow and misses a Corolla
By this much alarming
The sister to tears. I want to
Reach out to stop him
But he is not
My brother. My brother
Who must be walking
Right now somewhere
Upstate, the green leaves
Rustling above him and he
Delivering the mail, letters
Slipped in small secret boxes
Unreadable, reliving
Moments of little gladness
Thinking about his guns
Or his wife who had a vision
Of the Virgin last year
By the house built
For someone else
For another purpose
And what is any holy
Sighting but caged phantoms
Looking to unshackle
Their solitude, retracing
Each step lost in isolation?
I almost hold out my hand
To see if he recalls
The feel of it holding his
That one time crossing
The Allen Street divider
But the ghost who is
Not my brother fades
Into a cracked wall
Of an ancient fortress
In a parallel dimension
Where the jailer warns
"Stop or I'll shoot!"
When what he really means
Is "don't go, don't leave
Me here all alone."
Even though the prisoner doesn't
Stop running he never does
Escape at the end.
Butter for Use
People often laugh at my comic stories
of poverty in the squatters' village,
as refugee and illegal immigrant before
I was nine. Mostly, though, they're nostalgic for
me, for the long way I've come, as if I were
a runner who'd tripped at the start but came in
second. I can see the image they've cooked
up, romantic and satisfying to see me
at their table, on their lawn, by the seaside
in the sunset, tan and healthy. At last.
Like a feel-good movie. Like a beacon of hope.
To hammer in Ragged Dick's cliche, I throw in
details of tropical misery - tuberculosis and intestinal
worms form chewed and spitted sugar canes, insects
in the apple, tin roof over mud floor,
colonial cruelty and municipal alms.
But away from the rapt audience, when I return
to myself, when I'm alone, I'm never hungry
for those days of waiting in line
every week for that government butter,
useless tubs of British charity
on which my family sat while we strung up
pearl necklaces, copper beads between tin seeds,
plastic bouquets, each leaf crowned by lime green fern
in our public housing, our one room life.
Although we steamed with water and fried with oil,
I collected the vats all the Tuesdays, stacked them up,
stood on them to reach for rice or climb to bed
and that was what butter looked like, what it was used for
until age thirteen I got into Avenue U Theatre's 70 cents
Wednesday double-feature of Carnal Knowledge
and Last Tango in Paris, when Marlon Brando
by then hysterical and numbed by want,
besieged by riddles of rose and rage
directed Marie Schneider how to cut
her nail and use that stick of butter
so he might cross over that abyss of disgrace
to feed on the finger of retribution.
Maybe like him, it's too late and I'm too far
gone to accept the better moment
without dragging in the shame, to forget
what we were like once or take to heart
the plenty manifest: Cote du Rhone,
Champagne cocktail, steak au poivre,
quiche Lorraine, rosemary infused olive
oil in which to dip the artisanal loaf.
Unlike him though, I recognize
the moment when it's enough
deliverance to stand by myself
in a quiet morning, in an empty kitchen
and spread the butter on toast
like everyone else.