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Return
- 245 Wortman Avenue
- East
New York, Brooklyn
-
- Forty years ago, I
bled in this hallway.
- Half-light dimmed the brick
- like the angel of
public housing.
- That night I called
and listened at every door:
- in 1966, there was
a war on television.
-
- Blood leaked on the
floor like oil from the engine of me.
- Blood rushed
through a crack in my scalp;
- blood foamed in
both hands; blood ruined my shoes.
- The boy who fired
the can off my head in the street
- pumped what blood
he could into his fleeing legs.
- I banged on every
door for help, spreading a plague
- of bloody
fingerprints all the way home to apartment 14-F.
-
- Forty years later,
I stand in the hallway.
- The dim angel of
public housing is too exhausted
- to welcome me. My
hand presses
- against the door at
apartment 14-F
- like an octopus
stuck to aquarium glass;
- blood drums behind
my ears.
- Listen to every
door: there is a war on television.
from
The Republic of Poetry |
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