“if I were some body, I would call new york” and other poems

I watch midnightwalking on tiptoe
around the fountain
in Washington Square Park.

I watch the piano playersing Sinatra
through my camera.I filmed her
earlier that day

While a childgave birth
through his mouth
an archipelago of bubbles

And these bubbles know well how
  to livein a moment:
their brief life, a total view of the park,

But once they exhale, theyexpire.
Tonight, eveningis the enclosed fence
surrounding the park.

Dead silence exhausting the air —
each breath and swollen red-eyed bronchiole
vacuumed out from my wing-torn lungs.

What should I feel but I sat on a bench
beside a mcdonald’s burger and a plastic soft drink cup
left for ghost pigeonsto peck.

The strawpoints to the direction
of light flickering in one of the buildings
outside the park.

I am reading morse code,
each blink in the eye a dot, a dash, then pause
but it turns out to contain —a

tap, tap, tap
inside my ears shares
the samebeatof lullaby

mymother
sangtome
before she waslost.

that is broken
and unbroken,

a pair of old
reeboksbrokers

a deal with the pave-
ment for a square foot

of space. each step, a
root gripping, stamping

dashes of rubber ants
burning and crease is

a personal history of
mud, tissue paper,

and shit. red brick
walls —the brooklyn

of brooklyns —have
broken windows

and have broken
windows. the

fountain pen piss
on doorstep is a

signed autograph:
the name of hope:

meaning, refusal
of erasure, meaning,

the smell bites back.
the trail will skunk

the whole block,
and not even for a

blocked sinus or
strong old spice

can drag a body
out from its graffiti,

this portrait of dust
zoomed in by a

periscope is a
pimpled whirlpool

pimping on the
east river, sucking

boats en route
to staten island

and all frustrations
cussing in it contained

inside a cold january
face. but ambition

is not a grain of rice
easily surrendering to

the kitchen sink. it’s
strands of green hair

spooled into furball,
clogging the piping,

until the tap will tap
out and say uncle. say

what are you swearing:
winter coat covers a

a song, a body rub
strumming muscle

into warm mulled
wine over a burning

garbage can, fueled by
time capsule letters,

each word on paper
is hot coal of tears

jumping from magma,
coalescing into the

streets as tumble-
weed, knocking out

every brick building
and tooth. centripetal

force from a tumbler
pulls together the

dust, dirt, shit, fall
leaf, lost penny

into a collective
echo, a shattering

of every glass office
and eyeglass, pores

sweating a scream,
the unpaid bills, the

screeching customer,
the scamming boss, the

scab-crusted alleys,
the gross excess of

money, the glass sky-
scraper a border wall

fencing the borough,
and grassexhumes

the skull of hope,
hopeher name,

beautiful to invoke,
but hope’s a dead name,

spray-painted on pavements
and benches by pigeon

excrement, urban legend,
prison sentence is

fear from the children
after combing hope’s

hair claw and rib cage
from a sandbox while

a pigeon takes hope’s eye-
ball off her smile.

here in brooklyn, hope
was any other new

yorker: riding the sub-
way every day to work

after snoozing the alarm
for the nth time. even

after waiting tables,
evening acting classes, the

auditions, the unpaid off-
off broadway roles, the

side hustles, and extra
shifts to cover rent and

diapers, hope throws bricks
until broken windows

reflect the image of
repetition, breaking, crying,

shaking milk formula with
raised fist. what else could

hope break but
hope: her skin, her

muscle, organ, brain,
her bone, mother,

broken until there is
nothing left to break.