SIGNS

 

When she's six blocks away

The windows begin to shudder in their frames.

When she's five blocks away

Every towel in the linen closet refolds itself.

When she's four blocks off

The credit cards in your wallet cancel themselves.

Three blocks? Your inherited silverware

Now has strangers' initials deep-etched in.

Two blocks; there's no time to find a new reflection;

You must comb your hair and shave without one.

When she's one block away, all the doors in your house 

Unlock, then lock and then unlock themselves again.

LOOKING AT THE FIRE

 

Anne Damer, sculptor, stands on the roof

Of Richard Cosway's house, watching 

The Opera House burn; her left arm 

Rests on a concrete sphere, gilded 

To lool like the Sun; her right hand touches

A statue of Minerva which will speak

If it's in the mood and finds you attractive.

A spark flying across Suffolk Street

Lands in her hand leaving a scar

In the shape of bird in flight. Years later,

Dying, she'll write a will directing

She be buried with a mallet, the bones

Of her favorite dog, an apron 

And a selection of new-sharpened chisels.

THOUGH AN UMBRELLA MIGHT BE MORE EFFECTIVE

 

Though the Third Avenue El 

Was torn down in 1956

You find enough of its shadow

To take shelter from the rain

RIDERS

 

Most of the stray shadows in this town --

Never claimed or lost or on the run from enemies --

Drift in time to the scrap yard where the disjoindered pieces

Of the Third Avenue El's shadow were hauled in 1956

Along with the bent and battered shadows of conductors,

Engineers, passengers, token sellers and pigeons.

When funds are available, everything

Will be soldered back together and the men and birds

Will board, no matter where it's going, the first train to rumble in.

WAILING

 

My Aunt Sadie, of course, was the one

Who remembered that Max, now dying,

Had somewhere acquired a banshee

Who'd have to be gotten to the hospital.

Max always had to be different; the Feingolds,

The Rappaports, the Zimmers  -- they all had proper dybbuks

And three blocks over from Snediker Avenue

A golem, living over a shoe store, could be hired by the day.

If a druj nasu -- an Afghanistani corpse fiend --

Had come to Max he'd have shrugged and hired her

"How could I not? She was down on her luck

And such a long way from home."

AZTECS

 

In the museum there is a flint knife named

Mictlantecuhtli who rules the underworld

And one named Tlaloc who tells the rain

It is time to fall and a third whose name

Has been lost; some think it's never had one. 

If your soul was unwillingly liberated

By Mictlantecuhtli you might have found

An administrative position among the dead.

Tlaloc-taken souls run errands on Earth

During the winter rains. Souls freed 

By the third and sharpest flint knife must wait 

For the day it finds its name.

THE ONLY ONE

 

One thing about being the son of a tailor is this:

When Death comes by he may wrap

What was you in a blanket your father

Made from scraps and remnants that looked

Like no other blanket in the world.