THE MTA DENIES RESPONSIBILITY

Among the unplanned consequences of repairs
To the Joralemon Street subway tunnel
Was the sudden appearance of Walt Whitman
In the laundromat on Middagh where he now lives.
He appears to be about forty and, while reticent
About the exact circumstances of his return,
Talks endlessly about himself and his dismay
At Brooklyn living under Manhattan's thumb.

MEETING THE EMPEROR

One day in her home town my grandmother Esther

Saw the ghost of the Emperor. This surprised her;

Franz Joseph was alive and even if he wasn’t,

Why would he be selling used clothes in Lemberg?

Still, she had no doubt. This was the face she’d seen

On stamps and coins, in schools and post offices.

She had always a soft spot for the Emperor;

And many decades later, in far-off Brooklyn,

Deemed herself still a reasonably loyal subject.

Her husband could, if he wanted – and he did –

Vote for Roosevelt but she, having grown up

With a monarch, considered a president

To be something inconsiderable. Franz Joseph

Did not roam about asking people to elect him.

Esther was 15 that day in the market with no intent

Of ever leaving Lemberg. Sometimes in her dreams

She flew, but when she looked down, saw the Poltowa,

Its bridges filled with statues which craned their necks

To see her flying by, waving at them.

(Her ninth child, my father,  also flew in his sleep

But I don’t know if he ever saw the Poltowa.)

Brave, she walked up to the Emperor

Who was extolling a pair of almost new pants

To a skeptical buyer, stretching the cloth

In his semitransparent hands. He gave her a smile

Behind his enormous mustache. How we have dwindled!

I cannot talk to dogs; I cannot fly in dreams

The closest I’ve been to an emperor is not very close

Though Dwight Eisenhower walked into my mother,

Knocking her down, three months before I was born.

DETECTIVE MAX

He was named Mordechai but came to America
Where he turned into Max. His wife called him Mortrazik
And his children, the ninth of whom was my father,
Called him Poppa. I cannot call up his true ghost
Since before we met age and Parkinson's
Locked his words away and set his hand trembling.
Thus, I turn to my father's ghost who says his father
Was tall and very strong and overflowed with merriment
(Try bring merry with 9 children. Just try.)
He called my father Sock because that was his first word
And how should a baby not know his own name?
Sock believed Max was a detective. Chasing crooks?
No problem; Max had the ability to jump over a garage.
(Max had a sense of proportion; he never claimed
He could leap over a house.) Sock knew his father
Was a tailor, but where is it written that a tailor
Can't also fight crime? I like to think of my father
Watching his father gracefully jumping

Over the surprised garages of Brooklyn.

MEETING SOR MARIA

That angels used to take my father flying
Has never surprised me. Most likely
They enjoyed his company. As an adult
He would recall these flights with pleasure
Despite the fact that the angels -- known, as a class
To be generally early or late -- would sometimes
Fly hastily across Brooklyn, fling my father
Back into his bed and then rush off.
Years after his death, travelling through the seventeenth century,
I met a Spanish nun, Sor Maria Magdalena de Agreda.
To my surprise, she had met my father
And remembered him. The same angels who flew with him
Used to take her from Seville to New Mexico.
She wasn't quite sure why. She sometimes preached
To some puzzled Indians, none of whom understood Spanish.
One night, she told me, the angels had my father with them
He was seven; his hair kept flopping over his eyes
The angels had lost track of time and then decided
It would be faster to get him home to 1933
By way of 1648. She is not the first I've met
Who cannot help wishing I was my father.

ON MY MOTHER'S BIRTHDAY

A milk bottle and a spoon;

Some keys, each with a name;

Spools his father brought home –

All these riches my young father had

As well as two Big Little books:

Popeye and Terry and the Pirates.

My mother? Brass miniatures:

Candlesticks, wine bottles,

A cocktail shaker (this seems odd),

Glasses, and a mortar and pestle.

She probably had a doll but this

I never heard about. Brooklyn children

He played stickball and nine o’cat;

She jumped rope. When a plane flew by

The streets filled with people looking up.

Older, she saw two movies every Saturday

And could remember every one of them.

He saw God once, but later wondered

If this was really so. When I try to think

Of one of them, the other comes too.