Brooklyn Landscape

Across from the abandoned hospital, ring the bells of St. Mary’s.

The hospital has become a playground, and the bus stop where no one is waiting.

Children don’t need much to be happy.

 

No one is sick inside there: the living and the dying are done.

All day, all night, ring the bells of St. Mary’s,

or so it seems...

 

but what actually rings is quiet

above the children’s playful screams. (Do hospitals have dreams?)

The long yellow windows slowly fading into dusk behind the setting sky.

 

Oh the ward was once known for the most difficult cases.

Then the doctors in their white robes moved on.

Even the ghosts have gone.

 

 

In Central Park

 

You tell me you’re not afraid of death

as we walk around the reservoir,

holding hands.

You could be anyone to me.

Lights left on in the Manhattan skyscrapers

seem to run towards us

and your family in Bombay can’t believe the photos:

a park in the heart of the city!

“But Central Park is the lungs,” you say.

 

Last night, your headache wouldn’t stop.

Distractions of the home theatre

and two digital cameras were not enough to make you well,

three aspirin failing us once again.

A pushy throb at the forehead first,

the pain arched its way back like my fingers did

through your thinning hair.

 

Finally we decide to make love.

You push my breasts together, my legs apart.

It’s the first time.

And when I taste you,

I taste mud and rock and water,

and I imagine I taste the gift

a friend brought you from back home,

six varieties of mango.

 

If I could,

I would find a spot right here and dig,

find fossils of the body in love,

not these trotting joggers,

couples panting around the park’s circumference.

I would search for a woman opening her better half,

her lover taking that sweet nut between his teeth.

“That was good,” you had said,

your headache slowing, finally, to a crawl.

 

 

Ten Days in Greenpoint

 

I don’t believe there is anything God wants.

 

This morning, the pretty blond Pole at the bakery,

serving me, small bright crucifix around her neck

on a thin gold chain,

her elbows, right angles,

for the sun to pass through perfection.

 

And from the door wide open, the air blew in

from the back of the river, Brooklyn wild honey,

the smell of sugar, her mouth exhaling

baby-blue, barely passable English.

 

Unmistakable. I was young once too.

The girl’s bony arm jangling the penultimate bracelet

of her knobby wrist,

charms so small, couldn’t make them out.

 

Ten days in Greenpoint now

and each morning what I want is

this ripe goddess girl

with a passion that should be divine.

All of us are faces of the same God.

His face is her face in mine.

 

 

 

Aliza Einhorn is a poet and playwright living in Brooklyn. She has a poem forthcoming in The Louisville Review.