Fourteen
When the woman asleep on the school-yard bench
is your mother, you can't ignore
the jump-start in your stomach, can't let the image
flicker and fade like a poor picture on TV,
can't shut the scene of her torn skirt, her legs
absently spread to a show of her sex,
the copper hairs glowing like electric wires
down her white thighs, can't yank the cord
plugging your life to her body, no,
you stay tuned to the crusts of breakfast
glazed down her chin like leftovers
on a snack-tray no one could bother to wipe,
there is no interruption as you stare
rapt as any lecher at the frayed checkered shirt
barely buttoning her chest, the life in her
clearly rising, her breathing effortless and constant
as the road runner beeping up and down
the cartoon hills while the lunatic coyote
sets the detonator over
and over, but you can't stop
that crime, you choke yourself
on tears, you keep your hands to yourself
though you want to throw a cloak, thick and warm
with your love, over her half-naked body,
this is all you want, to protect her,
hide her from the audience, the throng
that comes for the spectacle, you want to steal her
from those who do not love her as, truly,
you do, you who know by heart this madwoman
who does not stay in the attic
but comes to greet you in real life,
exposing
your real life at the place where somehow you must
show up every day to study your lines,
where somehow you must perform
this dress rehersal of yourself –
This City
I was about to say If you've never
lived in a city — but what I mean is
if you've never lived in this city.
I was born in this city and while I don't want
to talk about the Bronx or why I left it, I can tell you
a hundred Guatemalan sweaters tumbled from garbage bags
this morning on Eighty-fifth and Amsterdam:
fierce blues, purples thick as the pulp of grapes,
vibrant, almost violent, reds
slipping from the black-glossed bags.
They reminded me of exotic birds trying to lift
from oil-slick pools.
A man in a somber suit stood waiting for the bus,
and I imagined him headed uptown to a funeral.
But here he was, waylaid by cardigans,
a flock of wool sleeves, and his bus rerouted
for the street fair. I hoped he'd change his plans
and linger by the cactus stand
or the used-coat sellers, at a cookie-maker's or the vat
smelling thickly of grease and salty fries.
I wanted to stop,
skip whatever I'd been on my way to, not buy anything
but take it all in, the way last night the moon
was taken in through the canyon of each cross-street
in midtown. As I rode a late bus home
each street's separate moon dangled from a chain
of silver buildings. The bus went up Avenue of the Americas,
over to Broadway, past the Cineplex with pulsing marquee lights,
a billion syncopated bulbs orbiting
the names of stars. While my bus was stopped
I tried to focus on one bulb, an individual
with a destiny, its own on/off thing.
If it went out, the whole pattern
broken.
