The Five Points (a love letter to nyc)

I – The Landfill

We all sink between
this convergence
of drunken tenements,
shifting sleepily into half-lives
of arms and legs entangled
in soiled sheets.
Tomorrow they will hang
wrung, surrendering
to an influx of
new hands ready
to wring and harden
from the unconcern of earth
they'll dig to steady
this capsizing ship.


II – The Two-Step

There was never a point
When Father McKay refused
To let the Boy dance
On his church's pinewood floor
They reminded him
Of his parent's jig
And underneath his robe
His legs jerked slightly
The way the Boy's legs jerked slightly
a month from that day
As he danced in flames
From the maple in the square
A serendipitous casualty
of war.


III – The Heavens

Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech Haolam
The rest escaped her small lips in whispers
As the past was passed
Fingers pressed
on chipped porcelain ridge
of suffering and sacrifice
redemption and release
she pinched and swallowed
this bitter herb
Eyes straining to contain yesterday
When pebbles flew
at her quickening feet
Those schoolboys laughed
And she might as well
Keep wearing
Yellow stars


IV – The Leavening

Knuckles raw
Registering the knead and roll
Into cuts and crevices on his hands
His mother read his palm
When he was young
Said he would have a beautiful wife
Good luck and a long life.
The lines worn like sidewalks
Bulldozed into salted dreams
Memories of a past unfulfilled
And an unsettled future.
There is still time.
Keep kneading. Keep kneading.


V – The Cadence

After seventeen years
On this damp afternoon
Junior sank in
The rumble of bass, the thud
Which led him
Past Baxter, Mulberry, and Mott
Past the maple with his name
And the closed store-fronts
Into the rhythm
of his grandmother's Caribbean tongue.
He whistled and crossed --
head, heart, shoulder, shoulder, mouth
Whistled and wrung the towel in his hands
swung it cool
then hung it on his head.

Z.D.