Skating With the Blind Boy

His fingers search the ice, grazing like a camel’s lips on thorns.

Kazakhstan to Bryant Park- who could foretell it?

(His mother will be Skyped tonight and scream with joy!)

My student wants not only English, he wants

the hard, cold crunch of actual New York, he wants it all.

He wants more, more, more. I wobble, trembling,

at the wall. This isn’t what I signed up for.

I’m unskilled. I’ve failed. I give myself a zero as my grade.

What’s this?

His hand moves from messy ice up to my rental skate,

my clumsily bound foot, that I so fiercely hate.

He pushes up the toe and runs bare fingers cautiously along the blade.

Hypnotized, I cannot move. Now his hand explores the ugly plastic boot,

pats my shoelace, strokes the toe. When should I say No?

Then, satisfied, he stands upright- nineteen, a healthy, pink-cheeked boy.

“Today, I am so enjoy,” he says. “Thank you. I am so enjoy.”

The sighted skaters blur and circle us again. Infinity is this.

Spring, Young Man Crying, Greenwich Village

Photo by Serge Pelletier

Outside the trendy bistro

phone jammed into his ear

the dark-haired busboy

stands oblivious

to me, to the

entire urban

night-time tide

flowing all

around him.

Tears drip down his

cheek and off his chin

his stiff white cuff

is smeared with

nosesnot, gleaming

like high-priced

oyster slime

as his soft Spanish words

fall into the eddy,

pebbles pulled out of sight.

His red-rimmed eyes reject

this swanky scene,

bright silk dresses floating by

on arms of thinnest summer wool.

“It’s such a balmy night!”

His life that was so full is empty now

she doesn’t love him anymore

he can’t believe it

he can’t believe it

Song for a Damaged Man

They celebrated Hitler’s birthday, but not yours.

I guess your Czech parents were busier than mine.

It’s not their fault.

But, look- your father’s beer bought you that white horse,

for one whole week-

until the Germans were on the run again. Your thighs

remembered the bony spine

for months.

Meanwhile, I was busy being born

in New York City. For me, the war’s that

photo of the nurse and sailor smooching

in Times Square;

the war to me is you shouting in your sleep.

It’s not your fault.

And I,

I know only that our American horses pull

sleighs in snowy woods, and that our American poets

have promises to keep.

At least that’s what I thought I knew

before I met you.

It’s not my fault.

East Houston Street, NYC

(Christmas Day/2003, after seeing The Triplets of Belleville)

Fueled by panettone, high on French cartoon grandma energy

we bend low into the wind and head home

to more cheese, bread and doggy kisses....

and find ourselves passing a wheelchair

bound by massive chains to a playground fence.

The mind reels. Gangland victm? S & M routine?

All over Manhattan are bicycles so chained, to fences, poles, tree guards-

but a wheelchair? Abandoned? With such a chain?

No, awaiting someone’s return, for sure.

Will he/she walk to it? Resume a panhandling scam?

Cut the chains and pawn it?

By now we are past the vacant lots, passing Starbucks, The Gap,

the known civilized world collapsing on us like slush around a wet boot.

We drown in dreams of pending comfort. We inhale familar safety.

We reject the cold chain-linked world.

We hurry home

to more blueberry tea cake

to Charlie Rose

and those custom-shirted experts telling us how safe we are

how safe we think we are.

Emptying The House

Thick, chocolate-colored hair pulled

back into a childish mess,

she dives headfirst into the attic’s

leather-smellng surf-

swims easily in Time while I stand,

nervous, on the shore.

Dreading this chore, I’m more afraid

than she of what we’ll find.

Maybe old photographs have

yellowed teeth, old letters fangs.

A sudden heartfelt fury, and her

diary’s ripped in half.

Unknowingly, she groans and turns

to seize a box of books.

That tricky skylight rattles.

The sun is fading fast.

We’ve traded house for gold,

for time, for glitzy chance-

our last?