Arnie’s mother brought him breakfast in bed when he was sick; his feverish sister cried for tea and toast. Bob’s mom neither spoke nor moved while his alcoholic father beat him up. Over the phone Cal’s mother begged to see him; each time Cal screamed at her and hung up. Every single time she’d call him back. Don moved back in with Momma, said she needed his help. She cooked meals fit for a prince, on thin legs rounded corners like a Porsche. Don got to live on the Upper East Side—and pay one quarter of the rent. Ernest stored photos of ex-girlfriends in his bookcase, pleaded with his father in his sleep, shut his curtains tight, listened to news radio in the dark. Freeman’s mother counseled him from Chicago. Week three he told her I was perfect, month two he dropped me like a stone. Graham announced he lived in his dad’s basement. Five hundred a month— too good a deal to pass up. Saturdays and Sundays Hank took the D train for dinner with his parents, couldn't meet me on Saturdays ’til nine. Ian through Zachary? I don’t need the whole alphabet to learn.

A reporter queries: How does it feel To be bereft Of your Professor Longhair Disc, your Satchmo Sounds, your Aaron Neville haunts? Your framed wedding photo? Your address book? Your checkbook? Your handed-down-through-the- Family Good Book? A pair of clean, dry shoes? Can it be Your grand, green Mighty Oaks Your gold beads Your head thrown Back over amber beer Your noise Your glow Your crawfish soul Your etouffee funk is Swamped, cleared Scattered, floating away? A shell-shocked, home-lost Katrina-tossed U.S. citizen May have no time No strength, no wits To think: How do I feel As I smash in a store window Or rifle someone’s home Or divide my last candy bar in thirds Or hand a stranger my insulin? His world has no supermarket His world has no pharmacy He owns no shelves Because the world's superpower Won't send him Water Sandwich Shirt A way out From poverty, filth, disaster, disease. Oh, Fearless Leader, do you ponder: What would Jesus do? What would Adonai think? What would Allah feel? Millions know: Surely more, surely Deeper than you. George W. Bush: If an Emergency Room physician Pounded your Texas-tanned chest Could she start That organ pumping? Would she hear a hollow thud? Mr. President How does it feel To be bereft Of a beating heart?

“We must continue to go about our business and not let this threat alter our way of life.” – New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, August 1, 2004 it has become the business of every american, certainly every new yorker and every (d.c.) washingtonian, to go about one’s business to make it one’s business to feel a catch in the throat a tic in the eye a tremble of the heart because for so long our fearless leaders have made it our business to do business with those who ignore the thin-wristed hand holding the empty pot the torn-trousered child rifling through junkyard scraps the faraway person sewing the wal-mart shirt. we have made it our business to go about our business to engage in our busyness to fill our air with cell phone chatter to escape our souls with netscape to mocha latté more and more our already caffeinated brains. no time to spill our guts to spill tears to spell out fear that should have been felt years before we were afraid simply for ourselves after attacks on our sacred soil, sacred only by virtue of being ours sacred for being distant from them for letting us bury ourselves in what therapist says what boyfriend did feet-up-qvc-capidamonte-figurine dreams. we all become soiled when leaders when we turn away from fear for others. what a risky business, this trading in feeling for others this business of threats to our psyches threats to our souls threats to an unfilled stomach a foreigner’s home. we have always needed to make this our business to alter our lives because the life belonging to the bone-thin hand holding the empty pot the life of the unschooled boy trying to make money from a heap of scrap the life of a woman far away from here losing her sight deadening her brain sewing shirts that sell for bargain prices here, these are lives that should be altered and we should alter ours to see that. when we go about with our busyness we usher in more threats more shame more burials of bodies as we bury our knowledge of what is pain what is plain to see. mayor bloomberg, president bush, i hate to go about my business. i want to be quiet i want you to be dead quiet so you can hear you can see what business of it is yours is mine is all of ours. we can not simply go about and pay no mind to others’ business, no, we need to alter our lives we were put on this earth not for business not for busyness but for more much more than that.

I. I miss the Walk/Don't Walk Flashing traffic signs in NYC Green block-letter Walk exhorting me Come on, get going You don't have all day Except I'm born and bred, NYC Don't need that message even once. I miss the solid red Don't Walk Daring me with the first flash Scolding me with the second Almost shrugging its alphabetical Self, but finally staring Me down, showing me Red like blood I could spill If I don't pay mind to Don't Walk II. I miss the repetition, the singsong Groove. Walk/Don't Walk Walk/Don't Walk. What is it now - White Man Walk? Big Red Hand? Where is the poetry? Where is the symmetry? Where is the simplicity? Oh, no wordsmithery in that! Query: When I see White Man Walk Signaling me does that mean I should stay? Who is the egalitarian Who is the humanitarian Who is the contrarian Anti-English-utilitarian Modern hieroglyph-loving, scary man Who came up with that?| III. Tell me: How do I talk to the Angry Red Hand? Do I obey Big Red American Indian Hand telling all us multi-hued Americans to back off? Should we back off from wearing Smiley, dopey-looking, insult-every Person-native-to-this-land-before Puritan-hats-and-Abner-Doubleday Bats-red man-on-the-front-of- Cleveland baseball caps? IV. I miss the Walk/Don't Walk Flashing traffic signs of my NYC Like I miss Herald Square Swivel-stool-Chock-Full- Heavenly-cool Like I miss the raunch, the stale- Piss stink of pre-Disneyfied 42nd St. Like I miss the don't-do-no-favors-just Order-from-the-Ratner's-menu he threw Like I needed the menu Got the blintzes like my mother Ate when she worked there Working early in life quitting school V. Like I miss the NYC I never knew Ruth Orkin photos Manhattan white stoops Weegee hordes on Coney Island 1952 Like I miss hot and mellow 50 cents chipped heavy cup used to be Good in any NYC diner Good in Canarsie kitchen Good in pasticceria Not good in God knows Oversized, over-roasted, overpriced Overreaching, God-forsaken flimsy Loco, shut your boca Grande cup of Starbucks alleged coffee Oh, I wish it were possible to miss that On nearly every NYC street VI. Maybe it shouldn't matter in NYC that We no longer have Walk/Don't Walk that We now have White Man Walk/Big Red Hand Those of us born and bred Those of us as close as can get to that We already know when to walk We know better than car-driven, pedestrian- Hidden cities. We choose when We Walk/Don't Walk in NYC So, powers that be, don't you Big Red Hand me. I don't White Man Walk that way

When she thinks of him She remembers gold reading glasses Perched midway down his pallid nose Glasses he removed from a small, slim Case in his dungaree pocket to Read a menu at the Cedar Tavern, to Peruse instructions for A CD storage unit He put together for her The morning after His first night at her place When she thinks of him She remembers how he had asked her at the Cedar if She thought the glasses looked sexy on him Sweet plea for a compliment one week after She'd told him how sexy she'd found his extravagantly hairy chest This, on the first night they had been Together, because all things him were sexy simply Because they were him She hadn't given him A proper answer to his eyeglass question at the bar, but In her apartment, peering at his half-bald pate and goateed chin, his Naked back on her hardwood floor as he grappled with screwdriver and wood She thought the small spectacles entirely endearing And wanted to press his careworn face to her silk-kimonoed breast Instead, she smiled and said, You do look good In those glasses, granting a compliment as parsimoniously perhaps as Her mother had to her or his mother to him When she thinks of him She remembers thin gold edges to his Laughter, sounds somehow miraculous Given the bitter copper of his past She thinks she loved him because He could not let her, even though she heard the need In his voice, the way a child proclaims, Mommy, I broke your vase Praying she will say It's all right, I liked the vase but I love you so much more, knowing his mother Knowing her mother might have screeched, then Cursed softly while dropping cherished fragments into a bin

You make me Think of you When I'm eyeing that First date across the Café table, measuring his Eyes against yours: His, not blue Enough, comparing his Jacket to one of yours: His, not suede, not you Enough. You make me Think of you When a dewy-eyed Couple kiss On the train. I remember that Subway ride we Took, you helping me Off with your see-through Poncho, previously pulled on With four hands and countless Laughs before we Ran to the 6 line Through mean November rain. I remember the Thrillingly unfamiliar fingers of Your hands enclosing mine as, Train lurching, We held firm the center Subway pole. You make me Think of you At four in the morning When there's no one in The bedroom except me And the cat Who just nuzzled me Awake to feed her. The cat doesn't care That there's someone else Home wanting... Nothing that can come From an ever-ready, zip-top can. You make me Think of you While I pen this, wishing it was poem about someone thinking of me.

I was 13 when I first dreamed of My father coming back After his death. In sunglasses, olive Corduroys, autumn leaf-toned Shirt, Daddy remained Dapper in the afterlife. He stood at the top of the stairs, Stretched his arms, touched His toes. Then Daddy reached Over his head, high into the sky. I'm fine, he announced, Shaking out muscle tightness, Not incidentally displaying A sturdy physique. Death, I realized, Had taken years off Daddy. My father spoke again: I simply exercise every day So I can stay this way. Still, he didn't Descend the stairs to greet me. I was 15 when I last dreamed of My father up on our porch, Touching his toes, beating his odds. After that I could no longer Breathe his life into my sleep. In the following years I would Visit him in my mind Alert him of the Beatles' Latest release, breathlessly tell of The end of the Vietnam War. The talk went one way, but Who was I to disparage My father's newfound need to listen? I was 21 when I cried to him About breaking up with the then- Most-important man in my life. The ground stayed cold beneath me in That two-train-ride cemetery in Queens. I was 23 when I put my last rock atop His memorial slab, then turned Away from stone.