A woman walks to church the Monday after Easter. She's wearing a light sweater because at last it feels like it could truly be spring. But who even goes to church anymore on a weekday morning in New York? The immigrant healthcare workers will tell you. The nannies and short- order cooks, the 1 AM custodial workers; grandmothers who spent years polishing other people's floors on their knees as if before a god who only cares that every surface reflects his many countenances. See the figure that approaches her from left of camera, spitting words we know by now have the power to wrench visible what's usually invisible. Say scourge and it becomes scourge, say peril; say it must go or doesn't belong. See her fall beneath the weight of a boot. Imagine the crack of her pelvis on the pavement, a sound muffled by traffic in its banal passage. Tell me how a woman slight of build could save every last penny in a clean pickle jar to put children through college, then copper her with bruises as sudden flowers erupt on her face. A few feet away, three doormen shut double glass doors that might have pulled her into quick safety. Across the street, someone is screaming. I don't know what words those might have been. I wasn't there. I'm there though I wasn't there.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
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