what I carried through the city

I was in New York City at the end of last week and during the weekend. While I was utterly miserable while I lived there from 2001-2003, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I loved the city during this visit and my last visit (during December 2008 for a reading at BAM through A Public Space). Of course, there are reasons I was unhappy while I lived in NYC: my brother had just died months before my move there, I was poor, I was in a toxic, bad relationship. The city had no sympathy for any of that.

Now when I visit, I feel differently, not so beat down. Of course I carry my brother's death, the failed relationship, my poverty with me, but-- now I can wonder at Harlem, Central Park, Midtown, the Village, Brooklyn. Even the smell of the subway was familiar, comforting, almost. I became who I am in that place. I'm grateful to the gauntlet in a way, proud to have spent some of the hardest years of my life in New York City, thankful for what that terrible time taught me about how strong I could be, what I could endure and become better through. Now I can enjoy dinner in a small Mexican restaurant in Fort Greene with some of the best friends of my life, with the Spring night cooling outside the windows, the trees rustling, the red buildings lighting up, the sidewalk simmering, the trains rolling past under the grate, and not feel as if I am being swallowed by the mouth of that relentless, roiling city.

Still, the relentless push of the people towards one another, the relentless push of those buildings upward, made me want poetry. How about this?


The Sixth Night: Waking by Muriel Rukeyser

That first green night of their dreaming, asleep beneath the Tree,
God said, "Let meanings move," and there was poetry.


At that dinner in Fort Greene, one of my friends asked me who my favorite poet was and I blanked. I finally fumbled out Li-Young Lee with El's prompting, and then stumbled onto Louise Erdrich after that. I think I'll have to add Muriel Rukeyser to this list. Beautiful.