from Downtown Brooklyn #12

THE SCIMITAR OF EXCELLENCE

It’s November and I drive the car home from the supermarket and park it with the windows down to let in the cold and I leave the engine running so I can catch the end of the hymn coming from the one scratchy speaker in the dashboard. I still remember how touched I was when Lewis reminded me to put air in the tires (they seem to like air he said) and to warm up the engine before putting it in gear on cold winter mornings. I think of you alone upstairs and of the hour. I even look up at our windows (dramatically). I reach out my hand and almost turn off the radio and carry up the groceries (fresh vegetables, pasta, and ice cream) so I can make a fantastic meal to fortify you as you study for your biochem mid-term. I almost turn off the radio and come upstairs, but I can’t. It is not that the fumes have made me sluggish, or that the door is stuck again, or even that the radio knob is missing. It’s just that Iris Dement’s voice rings out so tenderly in the Brooklyn night and brings me back so suddenly to certain Sunday mornings in my grandmother’s kitchen over on Turner Avenue, the two of us watching church on TV. For some reason the image that sticks with me most is not Grandma’s face reflected in the sides of the toaster, or the matching suits of the gospel singers, or the inevitable dog begging for bread outside the sliding glass door, but the Sunbeam girl, the butter on her toast so very yellow, her eyes radiating such intense bread enjoyment. The song ends and I go upstairs and cook the food and we eat it in comfortable silence and it is good. I told you I was going to write a poem about the car and this is it. Later, waiting for the tow truck together, I will regale you with tales for hours and hours and I will tell you all sorts of very interesting things.


THE DOG KNOWS US

The dog knows us only by our
Indian names: Treat
Giver, Leash Holder, Tail
Treader, etc. We like
to talk about him as if he’s
a brute, less sophisticated than
we, with our compact disc
club memberships, video rental
cards, and expensive haircuts.
Fact is, he can see right

through us, as through clean glass
on a clear day, the wind at a
lull, the vegetation fresh
and fragrant.


SEE HOW HE SILENCED THEM

Every man knows I am your borough and every woman knows I am your Brooklyn and every little child knows I am your farmer’s market.

I have not yet been killed nor have I been turned into a Christmas cactus or any other household plant with or without beautiful red flowers.

I know others have said these same words to you before and I know that in their hands they carry olive branches and I know that in their hands they carry sublimity.

I am a different person now but I am still known by the same name.

I will give you a mass of stainless steel and you’ll see what kind of man I am.
I will join my hands together and be your mandible.
I will flex the muscles in my hands and become your jawbone with which you can slay as you please.

Let us leave this fool’s paradise.

Let us hold with wiser men and remember to carry olive branches in our handbaskets.

Your heart is in you and it is wild and I know it spoils for a fight but speak no word—good, bad or indifferent—though the storms are on the ocean and the heavens may cease to be.

The emperor of dirt goes forth beneath a pine bluff.
He cannot save himself. . . his ruin will find him there.

They counseled you to a bit of madness but their day will come just as our time will run out—and not a moment too soon.