Canarsie 1984-1996

I drove through my
childhood yesterday

-what a dump-

passed the old redwood shul that was
set on fire
behind the black wire gate I saw
my shadow playing with its eight year old friends
running back and forth
while the grownups prayed-
tag, you’re it!
and down the block was
unknown because I couldn’t walk
alone (now I know- Ralph Avenue
is not for kids)

before the smoke
there was Kosher City and
Jerusalem Pizza and Noam’s
Judaica- and we did tashlich
by the sewers-they smelled
but it was only once a year

(when we moved out to Jersey
Staten Island stuffed our noses everyday)

Canarsie stopped when we left
I think it may not even exist now
except that I drove through
yesterday-like seeing
a childhood friend
aged and shriveled-
Canarsie
the name rolls off my lips,
ends in a hiss,
like redwoods crackling
and fizzling in the smoke.

My Jerusalem

City of Music, City of Poetry. Lucky me, I can hear the rhythms and rhyme schemes of the streets: the hip-hop, hip-hop of little girls jumping rope- Anna Banana reinvented in Hebrew- the vibrations of clotheslines, plucked by windfingers like guitar strings- heartstrings- the huff and puff of buses as they twist and turn and squeeze through all-too-narrow-city-streets, the Halleluyah chorus that erupts every time a kid gets up and gives his seat to someone with a beard, white hair or injury.

The marketplace cacophony: fish breathing their last breaths before their heads are chopped off on the block, waiting to be served up for Shabbat, the twisting tango of shopkeepers and shoppers haggling over specks of dirt, the soprano beep-beep-beep of metal detectors protecting the unsuspecting, but always suspecting, people.

The foreign tunes of foreign tongues: Hebrew’s suntanned brazenness, Russian’s babushkaed proletariat ethic, French’s bereted elegance, Amharic’s dreadlocked click-clack-clack, Yiddish’s yellow-starred oifn pripitchiks, English’s bare-headed chit-chat-chat, Arabic’s kafiyahed snarl.

The dark drumbeat of impending doom cracks through nerves like fireworks. Explosions thunder in the sky, rainstorming fragments of life over heads of little children, getting caught and tangled in their hair.

The bravado of teenagers ringing through the air: "Let's go to Ben-Yehuda tonight- it will be the bomb!"
The cadences: volunteers picking up the mess, the human flesh strewn across the streets.

The choking sobs, the choking smoke of prayers caught in people’s throats, the Kotel packed and God’s ears open. In the nearby distance, the mosque belts out its call- a dirge- and mothers, fathers, sons and daughters cry on the cold stones.

The forward march called Life Goes On: preparations for Shabbat. Hope wafting through the air on whiffs of challah, cholent, potato kugel, running through the tap water and flavoring the chicken soup, sticking to the soles of shoes as fathers and sons walk to shul.

I can hear their footsteps in the streets, a steady, ever-present beat, melding with the poetry that David hummed when he walked up and down the soft hills of Jerusalem, the battle hymns and psalms that the land was built upon, a conglomerate of tunes and melodies, coexisting in Jerusalem’s grand, bittersweet symphony.

THE SHUK

I. Never Pay Asking Price
So I’m making guacamole, because I can,
which really means because I bought an avocado
in the shuk for two and a half shekels. But I can’t break
this bargain fruit open until
assured it won’t go brown.
I need a lemon.
So I head out to the shuk, a woman
on a mission. The first fruit stand I see,
nada. This particular shmoe
doesn’t sell lemons. Moving on,
jackpot. I take
my time pretending I know
how to pick a good lemon. Finally place one in the
translucent plastic bag that comes also
in yellow, pink or blue, and wave my arm
under the guy’s nose. He weighs it, grunts,
fifteen shekels.
I feel myself asphyxiating on the citrus air around me
and the flies are closing in and I think I may need to sit down-
until I grab control of myself- I’m nobody’s sucker!- and seize
the opportunity to practice
my Hebrew with a key phrase my friend taught me
for just such situations.
In my most indignant tone I spit, Ma, ani frayarit?
and storm away, lemonless.

Turns out, my friend tells me later,
there’s been a lemon shortage the whole year.

II. Drink Lots of Water
I’m walking through the shuk when I’m hit
with this craving for diet coke. (I have a diet-coke-
drinking problem.) The first store I see is
a liquor store, so I pop in for a six-shekel
fix. (Liquor stores here
follow the mentality that alcoholic
content or not, drinks are drinks.)
Forgetting of course, that this was the store
I had been to last week to buy wine
for a Shabbat meal. The clerk was slimy, like
the dead fish juice spilled all over the shuk floor.
Motek, he said, kamah yafah at. Yesh lach chaver?
Sorry, I don’t speak Hebrew.
It’s true, my Hebrew isn’t perfect, but I understood him
perfectly. Now, I see the same slick head of gel, his eyes
fall on me and he cries, Hallo, hallo, motek!
About-face.

That’s one way to kill an addiction.

III. Money is Worthless Here
On the way home from work, I find myself gripped
by a desire to be healthy, so I stop by a random
fruit/vegetable stand and pick out two sweet
potatoes, two apples, two cucumbers and an onion.
I’m only one person, but I need to eat too.
Take my goods to the register,
seven shekels. Beautiful.
Take a fifty out of my Anne Klein wallet,
hand it over.
Ma zeh? the clerk asks.
Money. What does he think it is?
Small money you don’t have?
No. If I had it, I’d give it to him.
Ach, get out, go, go, no big money here!

I’ve never actually been thrown out of a store
for trying to pay.