Evensong

an evening tide of taxicabs rushes up
Madison Avenue, yellowed with time, barreling
to replace cyan on the color wheel.

and if you stand on the sidewalk, centimeters
away from the magic of trees grown in concrete,
millimeters away from Spanish Harlem,
you can understand the force of the city,
the slightly muted sound of the bottom of one palm
hitting another, a smack colored by the soft pedal,
hold, hold, hold -
where rage is contained in the placement of
each step forward. none seeps out into the damp air.

each step forward battles against the weight
of the people in front of you and everything behind, full
of the deliberation given bagels and coffee,
avoiding flashers on your morning
commute. how is it morning again, mourning, so
soon, without the night having ever touched down
in a desolate airport, separated by
rivers with real tides to attend to, but close enough?

i am fighting to remain still in this wind tunnel,
the blast that hits me when i first turn the corner,
hoping for some more vines of morning glory, and instead
finding the bruised sky, gunmetal gray and jaundiced.

do you believe me when i say, i am already
a smudge, reduced to smeared newsprint, an year-old
photograph of someone speaking, hands wild, eyes trained
on a made-up enemy hiding in a trenchcoat. i have no caption,
so you don't know anymore what i said, am still
saying, saying for all time in that instant.

the sky should be blue in april. you should still be
here. but damned if you can get what you thought
you had: only the city is still here, and maybe not even
the city come september.

Thunder

when the thunder rolls in, it drags with it
pieces of debris, remnants of the city after
an electrical shock. i am still working on
remembering the correct answer, but i have
no more guesses.

when the sun sets again, the zephyr is shunned.
go east, you silly wind, and stop taking
more. stop talking, too, so thoughts can be heard,
beneath the honking. you've gone,
and that is final.

without interruption, the circadian rhythms
of the hunters are reset to that of the prey. in the
night, i think about what else i am, being hunted.
my words copious but empty, easy to dismiss, jewelry
for a demoted princess.

Hannah

i.
in a deep, inky darkness, a dance hall, shrouded
with smoke, the smell of beer, Hannah sits and listens

to the striking confessions of
a soul not yet learned to dance.

when the smoke fades, she does not
hesitate. she moves, like a chess piece,

to checkmate. your move:
when there already is none left.

she says, i can't stop thinking
about you. i've got to see you.

her intensity can be mistaken for
drunkenness, her confusion for inadequacy.

she will tell you herself,
i am a woman who is deeply troubled.

the connection drops. the gloaming,
set in rough velvet, makes the voices lower,

into static on the phone. Hannah remains,
after each loss - that's how you can turn away.

the fens remember only the clicking
of her heels, an impish sound, unsteady in

rhythm, still a prayer, still that
insistent cry of more life, more life.

ii.
like Hannah, i cannot stop thinking.
God. God, i am still here, as you are

still here. and that yearning, wanting to be moved,
is all i have left, after friends, lover

after lover have been lost, after those
insistent cries. more life. more.

i am small now before you, a black dot
on the pure, starch-white snow, still wrestling

with the split mind state that is the condition
of my existence: i will keep losing, you, even.

but loss must be recoverable. Hannah could
have given up much: a first love,

a second, a firstborn, his knowledge of her.
but i just want. so i can wake up again.

==

Notes:
I've been wanting to and meaning to write the "Hannah" poem for well over a month now. The first notes I have for it are dated March 5th, and most of them made it into the poem. Nonetheless, having written the poem now, it neither feels complete nor does justice to the things I was thinking about: the essential and honest parts of a person, often hidden, loss and yearning, the semi-real vs. the Biblical Hannah, where I fit into that story, etc. Is it my story or Hannah's story? Both. Neither. And neither of us are reacting to human actions, perhaps. Only life. Still, the poem feels incomplete, and falls short of the expectation begotten from the month-long gestation. That's how it always is though: the longer you wait to write it, the worse it becomes. Something about poetry not being literal truth should make me feel better, but I don't know if it does.

And, credit where credit is due: Biblical Hannah is from 1 Samuel, yearning is from Marie Howe (I had originally written, "that yearning, just like Marie said," but decided against the mention in the body of the poem for a number of reasons), and the idea of recoverable loss is from Tony Kushner.