forbidden places
in all the forbidden places
like round the corner
and too far up the block
and up and down the you'll fall from it fire escape
and across the bad boy bad girl rooftops
of fertile pigeons and antenna thieves
through the sinister shadows of subway stations
and beware of dogs junkies
and the drunken super
basements
through the unexplored side streets of childhood
my mind wanders
that musk of the living
and dying tenement compels me
the gloom of alley and airshaft
the glow of sunlight on brick
i must navigate asphalt rivers
i must trek the broken glass
graffitied mainland to reach
the cement heart of the interior
and i will not return
i am the great explorer forever lost
in the concrete wilderness
i will discover america
flowering in the rubble
****************
Commentary:
My father parked his car in a garage about nine blocks from our house. Almost adjacent to the garage was an abandoned tenement. The street was not wide, so we got a good view as we walked past. It had not been boarded up, and through the space where there had once been a window, I could see the ruins of the front room, in shadow, with broken walls, and the vague appearance of another room behind it. A damp smell emanated into the narrow street. Possibly the building had been made uninhabitable by a fire. I would never cross the threshold and explore the shadows beyond the broken door.
And there were other places I would not go. In the good old days people might sleep on tenement rooftops on hot summer nights or keep belongings in the basement storage room. But our mothers knew that the good old days were gone. They kept a careful watch on us. Our mothers let us play in the street, but we had to play where they could see us from the front window. And we usually stayed within our boundaries. But the forbidden beckons, and the imagination wanders.
Appendix: forbidden places
This is an early version of the poem:
forbidden places (@ 1989)
in all the forbidden places
like round the corner
and too far up the block
and up and down the you'll fall from it fire escape
and across the bad boy bad girl rooftops
of fertile pigeons and antenna thieves
and through the sinister shadows of subway stations
and beware of dogs junkies and the drunken super basements
my mind has wandered
and not yet has found home
I liked the images in the poem: fire escapes, shadowy subway stations, and rooftops where in the 1950s gangs sawed off television antennas to make zip guns. Behind our tenement there was a large open space, called an airshaft, so that there could be ventilation for the rear apartment windows. I guess the airshaft was about fifty by one hundred feet, and the bottom, which was maybe sixty feet below the roof, never seemed to catch a sunbeam. The building's supers had apartments in this gloomy underground world.
However, I was not happy with the last two lines of the early draft. I played with the poem over the years. I have always been fascinated with Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which led to the idea of exploring the urban wilderness. As I began contemplating from the banks of brook avenue manuscript, I knew that this would be the opening poem. I did not want a poem that would be over a page long. I wanted a piece that would be understandable and that would lead the reader into the book. I also wanted a positive end to the piece, thus the promise of flowers emerging from the ruins.
washington comes to visit
he arrives at grandma's house
just off cypress avenue
but nana does not serve him a bowl of her soup
and poppop does not offer him a hand-rolled cigar
and dad does not take his picture
because they are not home
it is 1781 and even their home is not there
but the british are
and washington is scouting enemy positions
so the redcoats welcome him
with cannon fire
from harlem and randall's island and nearby ships
but the general
continues his visit and goes
to the shoe shine parlor on brook avenue
uncle al does not give him a free shine
mom and aunt jean are not standing in the doorway
aunt helen is not watching from her window
and grandfather does not run out
into 138th street as he does
to welcome roosevelt's motorcade
he shines the cops' shoes
so they let him shake
the hand of the beloved f.d.r.
but washington is not yet president
and the shoe shine parlor and 138th street
and cypress avenue and brook avenue are not there
though the millbrook is and so is the mill
and muskets fire and cannons roar
it is noisy as the fourth of july
and washington plans to attack manhattan
and bring peace and quiet to the neighborhood
but he marches to yorktown instead
and the rest is history
****************
Commentary
Professor Lloyd Ultan's account of The Grand Reconnaissance (which appeared in the Spring 2002 Bronx County Historical Journal) mentions Washington approaching on the Cypress Hill, and a cannonball landing near the Millbrook, a stream which is now beneath Brook Avenue. It is hard to imagine a Bronx landscape without tenements. In 1781, the British had a line-of-sight that allowed them to fire artillery from Harlem into The Bronx. According to Ultan, Washington arrived at a hill on 140th Street and Cypress Avenue as the firing began. My father's family lived at 141st Street, just off Cypress Avenue, and my mother's family had a shoe shine parlor on Brook Avenue. There is a historical photograph, which was published in Bronx Accent: A Literary and Pictorial History of The Bronx, and in The Beautiful Bronx 1920-1950. It depicts Roosevelt's motorcade on 138th Street on October 28, 1940. In the lower right, my mother and her sister can be seen standing in the doorway of 514. Above them another aunt is looking out her front window. On July 11, 1936, the Triborough Bridge opened. Roosevelt's motorcade drove through 138th Street. According to my mother, her father ran out and shook the President's hand. The police let him do it. They knew him because he had shined their shoes. It may have been the best tip he ever received.
Appendix: washington comes to visit
I wanted to write a poem about Washington visiting the South Bronx. The original idea was along the lines of “even Washington fled from here.”
This is a rough beginning from my 1991-1992 notebook:
washington fled
washington fled
amid fear
maybe landings at port morris
maybe men of war
sailing the shallow bronx river
three ambushes
route the hessians at pelham bay
each slaughter they thought the last
imagination exceeds reality
in this land of battle
who would be surrounded
on a peninsula
there's white plains
and new jersey
the suburban wilderness
This is from a word-processing file dated the July 29, 1997:
washington fled here (July, 1997)
even washington retreated north amid fear
maybe landings at port morris
maybe men of war sailing up the bronx river
who wants to die on a peninsula
and the land was left to cowboys and skinners
political gangs who stole livestock of any persuasion
while the british fortified randall's island
to stare at the mainland
and they stared so long that the opposing sentinels
agreed not to shoot except for a rookie lieutenant
who was reprimanded and the practical peace prevailed
while the cowboys and skinners professed politics
but did not argue ideology with the cattle and horses they stole
and plundered the bronx as the dutch had counterfeited indian currency
making sewant of imported glass
using glass imitations of the sewant
they hung a quaker three times here
leaving him penniless and almost dead
ne cede malis on the bronx flag
yield not to evil meet misfortune boldly
the sun has eyes and shines
inside an acorn beneath an eagle
having left the beautiful bronx manor
valleyed between rolling bluffs and blue estuaries
fruits were grown here and exotic trees collected
a mill was built upon the brook that became an avenue
and the orchards and the exotic trees
and the forest vanished beneath the buildings
the brook into a vast sewer
Much of the historical information comes from an old book, The History of The Bronx and Its People.
The Dutch did counterfeit wampum. That fact made it into a draft of “randall's island,” then was cut as that poem was revised. It is alluded to in “ps 43” in the lines: “is that real money or are these guys just / a couple of broke tulip farmers with counterfeit wampum.”
The reference to The Bronx motto and flag became the subject of “ne cede malis....” The brook being subsumed by a sewer is referred to in “liberation, or the brook avenue parking meter quartet.”
In the summer of 2015, I was working to complete the from the banks of brook avenue manuscript, and the idea of a poem about Washington was on my list of possibilities. I read in Ultan's article that Washington had reached the hill at 140th and Cypress Avenue when the firing began, and that his guides took shelter behind the mill at 137th and Brook Avenue. The article also mentions how Washington and Rochambeau, amid the bombardment, had passed the hiding guards. So he really did visit the old neighborhood. But my family was not there yet!
I started to play with the idea of their not being there. This approach was much more positive than that of my earlier notes. I had fun imagining all the things that did not happen because my family was not there yet!
And I enjoyed suggesting that his plan to conquer Manhattan was motivated by his desire to stop the noise. “and washington plans to attack manhattan / to stop the noise / but he marches to yorktown instead / and the rest is history.”
I was delighted to come up with that ending: historical accuracy and a corny joke!
Sample of The Annotated Edition
From the Banks of Brook Avenue Annotated Edition is available as an e-publication from Smashwords
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from the banks of brook avenue: annotated edition
From the Banks of Brook Avenue: Annotated Edition
Zeugpress
2021
ISBN: 978-0-9632201-7-2
Perfect Bound, 188pp.
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From the Banks of Brook Avenue: Annotated Edition
Zeugpress/Smashwords Edition
2021
ISBN: 9781005697303