from the chapbook manuscript A Guide to Interesting Vacations

HOW TO GET TO A SECRET MONASTERY IN THE CENTER OF FLATBUSH AVENUE

Emerge from the subway blinking in Brooklyn
at Lawrence and Willoughby, a stop early
to learn a new landscape and find everyone
making their way over icy sidewalks. Slow

motion. Sight along the skyline to
get your bearings, confused yet
exhilarated by the spin

of bewilderment. Locate the nearest coffee
store. Pick your way past a book shop, two
fish markets, the check cashing place, and deli
after deli toward Flatbush Avenue, strangely

silent, the traffic usually pours
over the Manhattan Bridge this time of day.
Clutch your cup and set out
across the Avenue, step by precarious

step, mindful of the ice. Later, find yourself still
in the middle of the road, oblivious to the
cars, bent at the waist, one foot poised in the air,
and realize it doesn't matter where

you place it down again.


HOW TO GET TO A RESTAURANT THAT SERVES NOTHING

Invite your best old friend to come from Chicago
to spend a week with you at your home in Brooklyn.
Promise not to waste your visit
arguing this time.

You’ll have to work a couple of days, but
you can be back by one. He’ll have some time
to get to know the neighborhood, explore
the city, memorize a different subway
system for a change.

Reminisce about the good old days, debating
inconsequentials with white-heat
intensity. Wake up one morning and ask

where he’d like to go for breakfast.
When he suggests a quick bite at the
restaurant on the corner (he went there yesterday
and it was just fine), argue vehemently.

For the next three hours,
stomp up and down Seventh Avenue and
gesticulate wildly at each other,
you insisting that one should
always try new things, he
that it’s just
eggs and coffee.


HOW TO GET TO GRACELAND

Go to a yard sale in Hoboken
and buy an old 8-track tape

player from an elderly Italian
couple who do everything together

like get down on their knees
on the sidewalk in front of their
house and fix the cracks
in the cement. Maybe

they’ll throw in
Elvis’s greatest hits and send you
on your way.


HOW TO GET TO A SECRET MONASTERY IN HOBOKEN

Wake up before anyone else
and head toward the Hudson.

Not even day yet,
buy the first paper off the stack,
and the first cup of coffee from
the first pot at City Hall Deli.

Hide your complete surprise when
they charge you only 75 cents
for a whole cup.

Shake the cup before you open it,
mixing in the sugar and the milk.

Taste it
under a streetlight you can still
hear
hum it’s so early.


HOW TO GET TO A SECRET MONASTERY IN CHICAGO

Wander the supermarket and marvel for hours.

Engage in conversation with the customer
ahead of you in the checkout line. "You’re

not going to use that
condensed milk in that
macaroni and cheese, are you?"

She will answer "no, this is evaporated milk"

and the store will vanish.


HOW TO GET TO YOUR VERY OWN FARM FROM NEW YORK CITY

Carefully photograph those paintings of chickens
all over the sidewalks of Greenwich Village.

Use these photos as models and paint similar
chickens on your country mailbox. Flightless

yellow blue and red
birds to welcome your mailman.

Bright enamel chickens will soon quietly
scratch and peck out at the end
of your new dirt driveway.


(See an earlier version of this last one here.)