20-35 38th Street

Chrissy lived on a quiet side street 10 blocks from the N-train. She lived in a basement apartment with two small, barred windows and a locked door to a tiny plot of land littered with the remnants of a pear tree. The house was owned by the Greek woman upstairs who was renting to her illegally. Sometime in late May, the apartment had flooded. Chrissy called me to tell me that her pictures had been ruined, that the cat she was harboring against her landlord's will was in heat and that she was struggling to keep up with the financial demands of post college life. Things had changed a lot from the time we spent together at the tiny, private college in the boondocks of New Hampshire. Chrissy had softened, and returning to New York City was more difficult than she expected.

I also needed a change. I was heartbroken. My first love had ended and classes were coming to a close. I quit my job as a waitress and within 24 hours packed up what little belongings I had into my flatbed pickup truck. I had a cap on it then. I figured it would come in handy for future road trips and camping, neither of which I ended up doing. Instead, I drove for the first time what would become the familiar four hour pilgrimage down the roller coaster highways of Connecticut's I-84 and past the identical urban tenements of I-95's co-op city. As I neared the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, it seemed as if everything were shrinking, getting tighter, like an artery about to burst. Until at once, the sky opened up, and the silhouettes of a thousand crooked gravestones of the Greenwood Cemetery stood in juxtaposition with the backdrop of a billion jagged dreams, the skyscrapers jutting up from a land that once grazed sheep, like what Walt Whitman described in his poem "Taking a Ferry to Brooklyn."

Anyone who remembers driving this route for the first time can probably relate to the overwhelming sense of adrenaline one feels bearing witness to this amazing scene. But like everything else in New York, it's gone in the blink of an eye, swallowed up in a blaze of forward motion, the necessity of planned actions takes precedence over lingering. These scenes will, however, distract you at first-like it did for me when I actually had to cross the George Washington Bridge twice, stopping at an ATM in Staten Island since I was out of money on the first go round. I will give myself credit in that I was ballsy enough to try to reason with the toll booth attendant who was neither sympathetic nor yielding to my emphatic pleas begging him to let me through without paying. Needless to say, after 5 hours of driving and needing to pee, Queens had never sounded better.

When I stepped out onto the pavement, the soles of my shoes almost melted from the heat, the hairs on my freckled arms stood up against the breeze of a passing train, as a man swept idly outside a Greek cafe where men laughed through open windows yelling about the futbol match blaring from a fuzzy t.v.

This was Astoria Boulevard, circa 2001, the summer before the World Trade Center fell: Greek diners, Indian grocery stores, sidewalk bodegas with pineapples the size of my head for a dollar, empinadas, candied nuts, dollar stores, blue collar bars, restaurants with the windows open, homeless tinkerers peddling books, homemade bracelets and tarot readings, some sleeping on the blistering pavement of a million eyes and minds. I got back into my car after a stretch and followed the grid like an etch-a-sketch down the boulevard, then east, then north again almost to the East River where the Hell Gate Bridge stood towering in the background.

I arrived to the apartment at that perfect point of daylight when the sun reflects a soft, warm light that makes everything feel like a postcard. I parked next to an abandoned handball court, overgrown with vines and weeds crawling up through the cracked pavement. Broken bottles glistened like diamonds, like water in the distance. I looked across the street at my new home. Digging out the key from under the rose bush where Chrissy had left it, I ventured down the narrow stairs into the dank, dark privacy of my new life. As I closed the door behind me, I listened through the walls, standing as if frozen, breathing in the feeling of my surroundings. As a shard of light shown in through the barred windows illuminating the lingering dust of my new life, I thought, "this is it."

History vs. Novelty

The ghosts of our forgotten intentions

are hard to resurrect.

When the light of dawn breaks,

we are called to move forward.


When it's history versus novelty

there is a choice to stay or go,

but newness washes over us

erasing our memories in the sand.


The ghosts of forgotten intentions

come swiftly in the night

sprinkling our dreams with emotions

awakening us to what was.


The tide drags in a conch shell to our past,

and the cycle of sunsets

remind us we are always who we were.

Lily Pad Love

He cast the line

hooking a gill

to struggle would be hopeless.

This is how one becomes a fish out of water.

The lesser of two evils

both painful

I surrender

rising to the surface

like through a pool of molasses.

Breaking the tension

gasping for air

I am bated and open

like a lily pad

flowering in the rain.

On Returning from Burma

She felt a deep connection

that threatened her reliance on structure

old fables rushed through her

providing some much needed wisdom.

You can lead a horse to water

but it's a choice to take the plunge.

And the tepid and shallow sands

gave way to dark immeasurable fathoms.

With the stars and a sailors compass,

she left her life raft by the shore

and followed the constellation

of her awakened desire.

Nerves

"Out of the arms of one love and into the arms of another."

Like motor memory on replay,

the pathways ignite,

sending the usual signals.

The tension of lusts life force

hanging on a crescendo of awakening.

Maybe this time I'll learn something

and move beyond the fleeting confines of my body

trusting once in a connection

that's more than just visceral

The New

Can't sleep and work at 8 a.m.

This year takes off with a piece of my composure.

My joints ache. I am writhing.

Wringing out the contents of my mind,

and watering the floor with my sorrows.

Heartstrings like roots give way to garden weeds,

the product of my own disinterest,

the ghost of plentiful times.