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Poetry by Jill Franks
THE BRICK ORCHARD
The Statue of Liberty
The sea holds the timbre of all souls,
fin and tentacle, bones
of warriors and ships,
pathos and power.
At any dawn in this harbor,
as ships pass like dancers
through the open door,
our Lady raises her torch.
The Bridge gracefully plucks its strings.
To the heart we fly,
no matter the time, day or night,
no matter the sky, clouds or clear,
sun blinking off waves
or moon passing in a void sleeve.
Our Lady opens the door.
Citizen
“Behold me!”
shout of light
spinning along horizon
as we crest the road’s high point.
She spills across the landscape
like a cupful of jewels,
diamond bracelet wrapping the
eastern shore, without humility.
Plunge of steel on rubber feet
to the alligator who lives
beneath the river: the Tunnel,
a birth canal where we remove
our green coats, our garden boots,
and are born again.
We are New Yorkers.
What streets there are
I have inhabited.
What choruses, I have sung.
Full of boisterous pounding life,
her scarves made of bridges,
glory puddles around the City’s feet.
Amazing and fearsome,
New York City is our home.
You and I meet here
across the walls of stone.
Step out with me,
a solitary singer.
Manhattan
Skyline lit
like coins dropped from
heaven's collection plate.
Madonna of the Bridge,
we embrace your fire,
flowing into your arms
on a concrete tongue.
The City she sucks our souls
for dollars and dazzle
harlot that she is
she's our breast and our beast
she suckles or destroys
takes our young in sacrifice
oh but we offer them don't we.
Skyline lit like Pacific sunrise
the tide our souls plowing
toward her center.
Madonna of the crosswalk
the bus stop the corner candy store
she is brilliant untouchable elite.
Skyline of heat and lust
her kiss is green
and given to only those few
clasped to her heaving breasts.
Calgary Cemetery
Landscape
of bones.
Through tombstones
the towers of Manhattan
rise and glow.
The dead
and the living
in one glance.
Landscape
of carnage and steel
of peace
and struggle.
A photograph:
headstone and hubris.
The Bowery
flashing lights
dark corners
vendors selling
hot-dogs for a dollar
walk this way
stock market
fish market
trample the crops
carry the dead
no carry the living
unseen
stepped over
crushed
the homeless
have lost their way
to the Manger.
Little Italy
Gaggles of laundry
caught by clotheslines
struggling
across courtyards.
Mothers calling
children from
front windows,
“Time for lunch, Anthony!”
Father Michael hikes up
his cassock,
playing hopscotch.
“Anthony!
You hear your Mama?”
Bubbling pots
perfume long hallways,
roof tar sticks to shoes
and kids clamber,
leaving footprints
like the steps
to a strange dance.
Open doorways,
clatter of silverware,
and the odd music
of people speaking
in two languages at once.
Downtown
Procession
of plaster saints
on Sullivan Street
to the church in its
stone silence.
Young girls in white,
virgins in a place
that demands sacrifice.
Looming over these streets
like dinosaurs
risen from a crack
in the sidewalk,
the Twin Towers
opened a gate
through time.
Your undivided attention is required
here
in canyons of concrete,
where the feet of men and women
dance in a rush
of anger, fear and hope,
where the sound of beating wings
is drowned by the motors
that crush their fragile bodies
without looking back,
where footprints cannot mark the land,
where salvation
edges around corners.
Twelfth Street Pier
Old pier leaning on its elbow
out onto the Hudson,
a crack of water and light
below and above.
Hand-holding lovers walk along
beyond the "danger" sign,
feet crunching dead wood.
April evening wraps them
in breeze smelling of snow.
The river’s carcass.
slinks
in its well oiled bed.
None can sing
but the gulls and stars.
This place sits small
upon the shoulder
of the City
whose shining crown
casts light across waters
and into space,
seen by unknown eyes.
Midtown at Noon
Bedrock sucking
footsteps
blurred bodies
throwing off heat
and avenues
any lane
is the fast one
across the cracks
we ricochet
a plunge into traffic
racing
the amber light
making time
on pavement
that seals
the cobblestones
of a hamlet
securely
as the carcass
of a
dinosaur
lying
intact under
a mountain.
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral
Its walls ring
prayers
brought like gifts
from places with mountains
or plains that go forever
or snowcaps that ride the horizon
or thundering waves that crash
while birds run before them.
Hats and scarves
or heads unadorned
all bowed
by ringing walls.
Icon, anachronism
among glass monsters.
And God might say,
"Enter."
or,
"Be blessed for your hope."
or,
"It will be okay, I promise."
Central Park West
Horses along curbs
sleep in the hot sun
harnessed to carriages
feeling their burden
no pastures here
where tourists
hunt pictures
and children pour
out of winter
into spring air as
the Park opens its
green door
and the spirit stirs
in this cavernous
forbidding hallway.
The Projects
Walking blocks
not looking at faces,
carrying groceries
up twelve flights
through stairwells signed
by “The Hot King” and
“Whopper 54”.
Baby’s screams on four,
boys huddled on seven.
Above, a clatter of heels
and girls’ laughter carve
an echo around her.
Fumbling for keys,
hoping her footsteps
attract no one,
hurrying down the hall
past doorways like rainbows,
at last in the door.
Sun falls into the room
where a window box
clasps sooty flowers
which bob their dry heads
and the stink of rain
rides up from the street
on a damp wind.
Sirens far away
going downtown where
the cops are polite.
She’s sorted out
Creation, reconciled
non-being,
acknowledged that soul
is not eternally
intact.
Distant, the river
slinks to a clean place
with a rhythm like blood.
The earth turns
because it must.
View from the Verrazano
White hot lollipop stick
of sidewalk hugs
the Narrows, a place
for bicycle riders,
children and lovers,
an elderly muse or two
planted on benches.
Lollipop stick runs fast
under beach-like sun
and a so-wide sky
whose clouds undress
the silver span.
Her legs splay
and through her skirts
we see the grace
the power
the dream
that built the
Bridge.
Carry Me
He stepped into the hall
with a key in his hand.
The earth never paused.
Men behind him,
yelling.
He understood nothing.
One small moment
in the history of Life,
when the true and good
struck him down
in fear.
What shall we make of this?
Honest moments collide
into horror, lives
turn the dark corner.
When we gaze at the sky,
is it our reflection we see?
Does God carry us?
Crash of a News Copter over Manhattan
Slowly
pirouette
sharply crafted
steel arrow
diving
through blue
through
blue
while sunlight
gives fire
to metal
in one stroke
so bright
falling
through blue
ice cold
air
so high
and
free,
ballet of death
falling
to pavement
blades
catching wind.
Death of a Statesman
He died in his sleep
at eighty-five.
Like a bird
falling from a tree?
One moment perching
and then a plummet
through space
without the
lift of feathers?
Like a dove
caught in flight
by a bullet?
Did he die
with the teeth of
dread in his
dream flesh,
like the Wombat
in the nighttime jaws
of a Devil?
Did he die
in a dream, while
conversing or
walking a corridor?
Did he see death
through a dream doorway,
its knobby fingers
on the doorframe,
beckoning?
At Night, on Fifth Street
Eggshell
and corpse,
tiny
as a thumbnail,
vacated
by a spirit
large
as cloudbanks,
free
as pounding surf,
full
of reeling
sparks.
It is the night
a Mockingbird sings
to his mate.
Moonbeams
stain
the street.
A tulip
plucked in bloom
can be heard
to cry out.
An Accident on the Subway
He is among them,
wraith in wool,
roaring.
Eighth street.
Getting-off elbows
poke in a rush of people
onto the platform.
Doors close behind them
with a hiss, an exhalation
from the beast’s belly
as it inches forward,
flashing steel, then gallops
into a black hole of subway stink.
“Get outta my way, you freak!”
The man shoves him,
grimacing at his odor, and
the crowd moves forward.
He’s pulled along
spinning, wheels of color,
faces a blur and the scream of
metal on tracks as a train
turns the corner toward the
platform, double A to Brooklyn.
Get out, out, out
he reaches out
and touches her long brown hair,
removing her slender form
from the crowd, from the world,
a maiden for the monster.
Pocket Park on Bleeker Street
Mockingbird rides phone wires
with a beak grin so wide
he catches bugs without trying.
Many miles away
his feet send scrambled signals
into confused ears, “What’s that?”
and a hum, a tinkle of toenail, a whoosh,
because mockingbird flies.
His tailfeathers splay as his wings
ride the wind, ride the sunbeams,
ride the winding river of wire,
away and deep.
So deep, in his song
the whale cries.
So high, in his flight
clouds collide.
So wild, he is free
and the wolf
the shark
the lamb
careen with him
headfirst from chimneys.
Sidewalk dizzily rises but
Mockingbird twists a wing,
pinging sideways through trees
in a pocket park where children
pass a summer day.
The Policeman’s Funeral
Wasteland,
streets
where sky
rolls away.
God turns
from
this landscape,
turns to stone,
to ashes,
among glass.
Life stumbles,
rushing into the
next hour,
a day, a decade,
bones and
rubble.
The flag is folded.
We are dead
forever.
God turns
his eyes.
Guilty
He stumbles through
what life offers,
carrying secrets
in sound bites
like firecrackers.
He remembers
a child murdered
in battle. “She ran out,”
he says, “into the road.
“The others yelled, ‘Get her!’
so I did.”
He whispers to me,
holding his Silver Star
in a fist of grief,
on the C train
going downtown.
I wander safely
through his wilderness.
Ladder Company Nine
Fire is a thief
and a liar.
The heart speaks
in fire but
its flames are cold,
cold without reason.
This fire stretches
and yawns
across rooftops.
Its teeth chew dreams.
Lit up firecracker truck,
sirens bright as flames
flattening city streets with
primeval wail screaming,
“No! No!”
Men in long coats and helmets
bring war
to the kiss of a dragon.
The fire waits.
Washington Square
She walks through Washington Square
where two dozen sparrows hang
like leftover Christmas balls
from a young tree,
sidewalk a pitter-patter of
hurrying scurrying worrying.
Far away the African bush
rings it sings it lifts limbs
wings and furred heads
to a hot sun shedding growth
into the flowing earth oh so green
full of breath and tomorrow.
Full of murmuring yesterdays,
the Square fills with air
in a breeze blown from
the mouth of God whose language
we learned not to speak.
Imagine this.
Unfold your wings and step out
into air thick with light,
below you an earth full of gold
with treetops for landing.
Wild at the Heart
Pigeons bow in circles
and hawks flow down
from the steep mountain
of concrete around the Park.
Coyotes seen at dumpsters
while downtown a pianist
finds shed snake skin,
a Boa among her Bach.
Deep in shadows,
the rats line their nests.
The City’s belly
feeds all creatures.
Death
They bloomed slowly,
rising through dust.
Husks of steel
turned to stepladders,
ladders to heaven.
The giant crane
rose atop the first one,
puncturing clouds,
causing gasps among
a litter of neighbors
who carefully scrutinized
the proceedings..
"Some plane's gonna hit them,"
they whispered,
as the shadows
grew higher and wider.
Like hatchlings
from hidden eggs,
they stretched up.
At last,
as if an angel scooped it,
the crane left.
The giants stood among us.
Bedrock carried them,
held them fast.
They were the new view,
what you saw when you
looked down the street,
dwarfing the homes of
immigrants whose children
were doctors, lawyers,
proving the Lady's promise
was no lie.
From dust.
And then
on a fair morning,
they came down.
Not flat down,
not taking out neighborhoods
where children played.
Not over,
not rocking the cradle
of the City.
Down,
floor by floor,
back into dust.
What do we say about this?
That those whose shadows we once feared
now haunt our eyes.
Friends,
anchors,
the first sight
on the skyline,
beanstalk to heaven,
fist of strength.
The first fight.
Heart Streets in New York City
The moon wanders in a crisp sky
with the tiniest clear-weather cloud
chasing its tail.
Plush valleys along the river
have turned to stone,
the hawks’ crags now glass,
not clay.
Whisper to me, I cannot deny you,
she seems to say,
our City.
Seeds of glass risen to towers of light.
No whales cry in her harbor.
Tall grasses lush under wind fingers
have fallen, centuries ago.
But her soul contains them, her presence
majestic as any mountain.
Into the shadow, trusting the path,