Highway-Side
Do you ever wish to cancel
out
the spectrum of sound,
and exist in binaural wonder?
Gut the patina in order
to recognize the neighborhood again?
Have you thought to pluck out both cold eyes
with a flick of the wrist
and grow new, softer, deeper ones;
tear a hole in the
chain-link fence,
widen its ripped flesh,
and shimmy your way
through it
to the strange dangerous
wilderness
behind the playground at
99th Street?
Have you longed to venture
up the little hill
to the thin black mall
with its strip of ancient
grass
and sun-browned wall
separating it from the
highway
and the planes above the
Hudson?
Pump Needle
These planes that flew
over the river
were a symbol of comfort
for us.
We might have lost the air from our football
after too many run-ins
with shards of glass,
and, lacking a pump and
needle,
had to stop our game,
stuck without that pin of
stainless steel
which to replace
required a trip downtown.
We might have had a battle
over some unfairness in
the rules
that left me tired and mad
that I’d lost the game;
or I might have felt the
shapeless grief of dusk,
the grief of sirens and
ice cream trucks
that hung in the air like
branches
at the time of night when
green returns to blue.
