by Sharon Lynn Griffiths
New York City, you're a woman - cold-hearted bitch oughtta be your name
You ain't never loved nobody - but I'm drawn to you, like a moth to flame - Al Kooper
New York City, I've got time - and I can wait
until I won't be pushed in the street by your crowd,
until I won't be bruised in your cattle-car subway,
until I don't want to hit the robot faces
that swarm around me, day and night.
Until there is room to breathe again,
until Times Square is beatific again,
until poverty can be genteel again.
Until enough is enoughóand greed is no longer good.
I'm your daughteró and you know it.
You gave me your fear of the dark.
You gave me your fear of silence.
You made me from your bones and blood,
that glow with fallout, pulse with lead and oil.
My feet are like yoursócracked and warped by pavement.
But I lack your loyaltyósold to the highest bidder.
I lack your selective memory
I only have one of your two faces.
For thirty-five years, I climbed up your stairs,
stank in your heat, froze in your slush,
slept on your fire escapes, walked
on your endless ribbons of stone...
but it seems you have given me away.
Not as the father of a bride might do,
more like the mother of a bastard child.
You can't hide foreveróI see you behind me
in yellow snapshots with scalloped edges.
I breathe you inófrom the pages of Kerouac, the poems of Ginsberg
the four-color ink on cheap gray paper
where you brood under aliasesóGotham, Metropolis.
So I will sing you my very own love song -
a song that sounds like the screech of brakes,
sounds like the humming of neon,
like the scratch of dead leaves,
the scream of a siren.
So I will sing to you, my city, the vespers
of spouses abused and abandoned:
I love you - I miss you - I want you - back.
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