by Adam Sol
South of the bridge, we climbed up a pile
of boulders, leaf mulch, and plastic bags,
and ate tuna sandwiches, looking
across the river at Cliffside Park
while commuters crammed and made gestures.
J was quietly popping his jaw.
His breath smelled like fish and sweet mint gum,
and I was silently thinking through
what my options were for escape.
“Are you ready?” I asked him, half-desperate.
No. I don’t know what will happen here.
The people . . . may not listen to me.
“They must,” I said, wanting to believe.
“Besides, don’t all prophets have that fear?”
For good reason. The people don’t have
a great batting average when it comes
to heeding God’s word. “I don’t either.”
Then he stood. To whom shall you pay heed?
To whom swear allegiance? Your cable?
A cash-mad pop-gun corporation?
To bogus anger or blasé faiths?
I am He! I have something to say!
A jogger turned but didn’t break his stride.
J laid his hand on my sore shoulder
and sat down to finish his tuna.
CHURCH OF THE INTERCESSION
Begin you braying trumpets. Begin you fruitful stares.
I bring you my heartburn,
my rancor and verve.
I lay them at your altar alongside the candlewax
and hunger.
Yea yo, you cowards and corporate aspirants!
You flagrant fouls and fugitive fortune tellers!
Where is your bubble?
Your hi-dee-ho and 401k?
It has purchased some infant’s afghan.
And you, who once raced the alleys in terror and surprise:
where is your alibi? Your stink? Your crying uncle?
O, even the archway over 125th Street calls down for absolution.
The M5 fumbles down and down, carrying its load
of househelp and entrepreneurs,
its waifs and wannabes.
But where is the city and its electric tale?
Where is your will to remake and remodel?
Yea, you have capsized the island, mi amigos.
Your ceremonials and serial monogamies
signify nothing before the Lord.
It is not enough to strive, o my people.
We must reconfigure the equipment.
You must see the drain and piping
before this year has shelved your dreams like swimwear.
HANANIAH
Word from Boob the Pen Man was he’d come from out West, some first round draft pick prophet with corn fluff in his hair, and a method actor on his tail taking notes and paying fines. He had a rhythm, though, give him that. Knew how to sing a tune. But this is my corner, only I harangue with the drang and bang that brings in the cling, if you know what I mean. He was trying his luck with the hot dog junkies and flyboys and was off-putting my beat with the cheats and the freaks, so I parlayed over for a shuffle-on, hand on blade. No need, though. He headed south like a good white man should. Fucker must really think he’s got the word. I feel for the guy. I feel like smacking him upside the head. Should know by now that prophecy is an art with no audience, just practicers.
REDEMPTION OF THE FIELD AT BROADWAY AND 88TH
Cousin, this is my ancestral square.
My hapless forefathers tilled it
from the time of the good judges.
You have been a worthy caretaker,
indeed a fine custodian
protecting the soil with this slab of cement
and dressing it with your coat and bags —
yea, you have erected a shelter on this land,
a sukkah of cardboard grapefruit cartons.
But though you have tended it well,
I have returned from my sojourn in the West
and I will redeem this plot again for my use.
Do not protest and risk the wrath of this bandage.
Fear not for a fair price. I’ve got a slew of nickels.
I will claim my right of inheritance,
my square of concrete, my little kingdom.
And I will build a house to house my house.
See, I have seed and a child’s spork
to till the dormant ground.
There will be zucchini on the roadway.
This field will bloom again.
GENTRIFICATION OF UPPER MANHATTAN IS NOT YET COMPLETE
Jeremiah loved the sidewalks
with their chewing gum beauty marks
and their proud manufacturer’s stamps.
He’d stoop to trace the wild patterns
as if reading tea leaves. People
would always look at him when he’d
stop to make a declaration.
It was only the New York What?!,
but was refreshingly direct
after our weeks of Midwestern
sideways avoidance. They didn’t
find him strange, or they didn’t find
his strangeness strange. They stepped aside
and went their way, some listening.
Is there hope in this, old prophet?
When I betray you, will those looks
sustain you in your confinement,
while they decide where you belong?
God, I’m tired. How can I do this?
What else am I supposed to do?
AT THE CONVERTED BANK
In the morning I heard the voice
outside the dear old drug bank,
the mortgaged mortgager on Broadway and 76th.
Go, it said, go to the newsstand and eat the worst words,
the false claims and natty explanations.
Then procure a shopping cart from the lonely men
in their haze of concrete dust,
fill it with good eggs and lay down inside
so the yolk flows in your hair.
Thus will I break the brains of the burgs and burbs,
for they have soiled my streets
with their wrangling and whine. I will feed them
wormwood and Saran.
They will taste the fruits of their labors.
What do I care for pennants and anthems,
when cabbies strangle for cable?
Where are my altars and arks?
What’s become of this house that once helped
Pashtuns open groceries
and fronted greasy spoons? My loan and trust
has collapsed into a pill panderer.
Pills for potency! Pills for prayer!
Do they not see
that like the sea they can
toss themselves against the sand, but they cannot prevail?
Though they roar like waves, they will not pass.
Soon Nebuchadnezzar will make his public appearances.
I bequeath it all to him.
All the wires and wireless,
all the blunt banners and butchers.
OUR PEOPLE. OUR WORK. OUR VALUES.
I am speaking into one of the last
living payphones in Manhattan.
The mouthpiece feels
as if it had been rubbed with Vaseline
and I can smell someone else’s
breath in my voice.
I am telling the 911 lady
that my old friend has lost his mind
and I’m worried
that he may hurt himself or someone else.
He’s yelling at the cough syrup.
And the woman
assures me that someone is on their way.
Already I can hear sirens.
All over soon.
J is escorted from the premises
by a Latino rent-a-cop
and instantly
sees me across the street, speaking
&nbs
p; with my hand covering my face.
He grasps the arm
of the guard, and just then a huge airplane
shrieks overhead, heading east to
La Guardia.
I can almost hear the synapses snap.
Before I can hang up the phone
he jaywalks south
across 66th Street and starts sprinting.
SPRINTING THROUGH THE 60s
Eicha!
The wall is breached, o my people!
The supports and ramparts languish together!
We have been struck with steel streamers,
and the shattered sky trembles!
Behold, I will not spare the tall,
the twin, the terrific, the tasty or triumphant.
They will all collapse like cans in a crusher.
The king has been called and is preparing his household for the worst.
Yea, they come from the North and we cannot repel them.
They come from the East and we cannot flee.
They come from the West and we cannot resist them.
They come from the South for our pretty ones.
See how we weep for our children,
and refuse to be comforted.
QUICKLY FIND OUR UPCOMING EVENTS
By the time I could catch up with him
we were across the street from Lincoln Center.
There was a bright billboard announcing
Branford Marsalis was playing that evening.
I came up from behind and just walked
alongside a bit so he wouldn’t startle.
He didn’t recognize me at first.
He was fully in the swirl of it. But then
he whipped around like he’d heard a shot.
He seized my arms and said, Now. Are you ready?
His eyes were fierce and blazing with tears.
I don’t think I am. He said, Too late!, and turned,
calling, First save the secretaries!
Then the janitors and early morning hacks!
His tone had changed. He wasn’t angry.
He was hysterical, moaning and waving
his hands as if his mouth were burning.
And the list of grievances had turned to griefs.
That’s when it finally dawned on me.
He thought the planes had just hit the Towers,
and he was heading to Ground Zero
to offer admonishment to the people.
I half-suspected that he was thrilled,
that 9/11 was what he’d predicted,
that he wanted to get to the site
to gloat, to revel in the horror of it.
I was completely wrong about that,
and should have known better. I should have known
that he was reliving another
bright clear morning and that everything had fused.
It was all the same pain to him now —
the firefighters, his son, the city, his son.
ACROSTIC LAMENT
Ah, she is awry! And all her beauty is anguish!
Behold the broken bone of my bold city,
City that once clamored and careened like a caffeinated Doberman.
Dust is now her dessert, death her deal.
Even the elms embrace ash and filthy embers;
Forgotten are her favorites, aflame her great fortress.
Gone are the good, the governed, the greedy, and the gallant!
Heavy-hearted, her heroines inquire, “How did this happen?” O!
I am ill with imagery, with the imagined, the imminent, and “this just in.”
Jarred, even rage escapes me. I am havocked.
Killers and kings alike are keeled over with shock. Yea, our loss is
kaleidoscopic,
Looming large like some magnificent Leviathan,
More mountain than monster, a new feature of our minds and memory.
Never again will nerds, nymphs, or nurses need reminding.
O, my people! My oatmeal-eaters and olive pressers!
Petty and pathetic seem the predictions I pandered from Quarry
to Passaic.
Quaint and quirky my omens! How quickly my regular rants and
Ridiculous ravings have assumed sinister resonances!
Still, I will say my piece amidst these stones. Stay sturdy, fellow citizens!
Tomorrow the Twin Towers will again teach us transcendence.
Unfasten the umbrellas of your souls! Unleash your uncles’ vitality!
Verily will our valiant wills be revamped into vigor.
Wherever we wander we will wage war on excuses and weariness.
Except for our expressions, we will nix our excesses and yearn
for examples.
Young girls will yell in yellow jumpers. Yea, Your city will rise,
Zestier than it was, wiser and more zaftig, zealous to be Zion!
COME SPEND A GREAT DAY DOWNTOWN
But we were still something
like eighty blocks from where
he thought we were going,
and I didn’t believe
he could maintain the pace.
Even by his standards
he was revving too high.
Should I hail a taxi?
The cops? An ambulance?
Then we hit Times Square
and he fit right in.
A woman calling
herself Naked Cow
was playing guitar
in a star-spangled
bikini next to
a mime decked out as
Lady Liberty.
There were young hawkers
and young hawks and J,
in his element,
spread his arms out wide.
It turns out even
the fiercest prophets
change to comforters
once the disaster
has befallen us.
And at the northeast
corner of Broadway
and 47th
he found the ruins
he was looking for:
a construction site
that was mostly hole
with a few broken
bricks and 2 x 4s.
He slipped through the fence
and rubbed gray fistfuls
of dust on his face
while the hard hats gaped.
DECLAIMING FROM THE WRECKAGE
Be encouraged, you sons of Scarsdale!
Let your faith sprout fringes!
Indeed a new hour clicks on the bank clock.
Behold, the towers tremble
and tumble into reeking estuaries, and drywall dust
pollinates the air.
From coast to coast our televisions groan
with the weight of their messages.
But there is green in this pit. There is an artesian
herb garden.
Let not this cataclysm be lost on us! Let us not
find fault in our pockets.
We have been anointed with fire, with terror
and error.
We are a chosen generation.
Here is the sign we awaited.
Let us then compose a new tractate. Let us
lend lawnmowers and Allegra
to our Armenian neighbors. Let the radio
summon church mothers
from their candlecare and grant them dispensation.
Let secretaries conduct
diplomacy from their cuticle cubicles.
I have seen a vision of a world
suspended on a rock over the ocean, and believe
in our precarious certainty.
Surely the day has come when we will all
hold meetings underground
and make scratches with matches. Let mall food
be served to our arachnid brethren.
See here in this wreckage the blueprints
of a new city by the waters.
POST NO BILLS
Security guards
appeared by verse two
and when they couldn’t
chase him off the site
they called the police
over from the street.
Like boxers the cops
flanked and harried him
into a safe corner
then calmly grabbed him.
They held his arms down,
put him in their car
and swung the door shut.
Simple E.D.P.
I watched everything
from the safety of
the sidewalk, then backed
myself to the curb.
I let them take him.
I just let him go.
SGT. EBEDIAH (“EDDIE”) KING
Look, it’s not like we don’t have other things to do. You’d think we’re just standing around answering tourists’ questions and nabbing pickpockets, but since 9/11 we’ve had extra training — you wouldn’t believe the number of potential threats we hear about every week. Bebetista and me had our eyes peeled for a well-dressed Tunisian with a yellow backpack. Meanwhile this nutcase is yelling his head off inside the fence, trying to get himself hurt, grabbing people’s collars and rubbing dirt on his face. Mostly the workmen just shoved him out of the way, and once I swear I saw him flat on his back, yelling away and covered in so much dust he looked like a goddamn ghost. But then he tried to grab a shovel, and the security guy got scared. So I said to Officer Kochmar, “Look, Terry, let’s put him in a car until he cools down.” We let him simmer until our shift was over. Can you believe the guy was still carrying on — didn’t shut up the whole time, not when we drove him back, not when they hosed him down, not when one of the boys gave him a blap across the mouth and threw him in a cell with the rest of the night’s take. He made it sound like it was 9/11 all over again and, to be honest, none of us were sure he wasn’t telling the truth. It wasn’t until one of the guys inside — some junkie we’d picked up around 2 a.m. — asked him straight up if he’d seen what had happened. Then he dropped it down to a normal level. I came in later, and he had them all sitting on the floor around him like a bunch of kindergarten kids. He was telling the story and describing everything like he’d been personally inside the planes, the building, everywhere all at once. The drunks were blubbering like babies. Then, here’s the best part. He led them all in a chorus of “Yankee Doodle”: Yankee Doodle keep it up, Yankee Doodle dandy. What do you say to that?