Enter the City

“Don’t Cry for Me Ocean Parkway” by Debra J. White

Growing Up in Brooklyn, New York

Bill Clinton was president when I last lived in Brooklyn – Forty Ocean Parkway was my only address there. (I still love Brooklyn, even though I doubt I’ll ever live there again. In fact, it’s doubtful I’ll ever move back to New York City.) I moved to Phoenix in 1997, and it’s likely I’ll die here. 

I grew up in the scrappy, working-class section of Astoria. Back then, we rode the GG line that went from Queens to Brooklyn. (No doubt that train line is called something else now. Has any subway line kept its original name?) We transferred at Queen’s Plaza for the F train to Brooklyn to visit family friends on Flatbush Avenue or to look at the rats in Newtown Creek. Maybe we transferred to another line. I don’t remember. The subway cars in my youth looked like cast iron, black and ugly. Seats were made of rattan and coated with shellac. When the seats frayed, bits of rattan poked you in the butt or scratched your leg. Sometimes, a good pair of panty hose got snagged by the unruly seats. Air-conditioned cars didn’t exist. Overhead fans swirled hot stuffy air around.  

In summertime, my dad took me to Brooklyn’s Coney Island via subway. Once the crowds poured out of the station, everyone headed to rides and the fun began. I always wanted to ride the Steeplechase, but my father said I was too little. Instead, we rode the famed Cyclone rollercoaster together. I loved the thrill of zooming up and down then flying around curves. We also rode on the carousel and bumper cars. Once I exhausted myself on rides, Dad treated me to a hot dog heaped with mustard, sauerkraut, and onions at the famous Nathans. Afterwards, I begged for super sweet cotton candy. I loved our trips to Coney Island even though the ride from Astoria took over an hour. On other days, we rode the train to Brighton Beach.

From Astoria, the only seafront views were looking at the East River swill. I preferred the smell of salty air over the stench of rotting garbage in the alleys by our tenement building. Sometimes, the drunken superintendent was so hungover, he would forget to haul the cans out to the sidewalk on Sanitation Department pick-up days. Once my dad rented an umbrella, and we spread out our blanket. Waves picked us up, tossed us around like basketballs, and we loved it. After we dried off and ate sandwiches Mom had prepared, we built sandcastles with our plastic buckets then watched as the waves washed them away. A day of fun in the sun with real sand and surf was much better than tar beach, the city term for sunning on apartment buildings rooftops. Days at Coney Island with my dad were special, even if all the sweets gave me a mouth full of cavities. 

I attended Mater Christi High School (now known as St. John’s Prep) in Astoria Queens from 1968 to 1972. A sizable number of students hailed from Greenpoint, a section of Brooklyn. In freshman year, I befriended a lovable nut named Helene who lived on Dupont Street.  Assigned to every class from English to algebra, we became inseparable. She was the Abbott to my Costello. We shared chicken-salad sandwiches at lunch, hung out after school in a donut shop on Ditmars Boulevard, and talked on the phone at night. If I cracked a joke in class, Helene upped the ante and made the girls laugh even harder. I’m surprised we were never kicked out. Helene invited me to visit her family’s third-floor, walk-up railroad apartment with the tub inside the kitchen. If her Italian mother offered food, Helene said to agree, even if I wasn’t hungry. Predictably, her mother asked if I wanted a bite to eat. “A little something,” I replied.

Within minutes, the kitchen table was filled with a spread of salami, ham, cheeses of all kinds, crisp bread, olives, pickles, cannoli, and more. Wow! I couldn’t possibly eat that much, but I tried to make her mother happy. I left that night ready to explode. I tried to walk all the way home from Greenpoint to Astoria to relieve my aching stomach, but it was just too far.   

During the massive construction project to build the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, linking Staten Island with Brooklyn, Dad would sometimes take us on the subway all the way from Astoria to Bay Ridge. Mom packed us a picnic lunch for the afternoon. We sat in a park watching the workers toil away slapping concrete and steel together that would one day become a world-famous suspension bridge. When the Verrazano finally opened in 1964, I was in the fifth grade. We watched the grand opening festivities on TV. After all the publicity died down, Dad drove us across the bridge just for fun. 

Continue reading “Don’t Cry for Me Ocean Parkway” by Debra J. White

Two Poems by Shaheen Dil

The Hudson River Park

Red sugar on my tongue,
I walk along the gray Hudson
beyond the bronze pumpkin,
          serpentine steel rods mimic benches,
past the fenced-off runs for dogs,
tennis courts, skate rinks,
past Pier 40, where the Hornblower Serenity bobs in oily water,
          winks, huge and beckoning,
          lights poking holes in a darkening sky.

I float on anticipation—
some glimpse of the world as black lightning,
Andean street players fingering pipes,
break dancers strutting their moves,
dreadlocks flying,
drums thrumming.

I pass strangers,
joggers’ faces showing pain or grace,
spinning to the honeyed air their sweat,
as though the evening were theirs to keep,
as though this secret could be shared with fireflies, blinking.

Union Square

Everything is on offer
          Saturdays at the farmer’s market:

stands with wildflower honey,
          jams, baked goods,

girls with fish-net leggings,
          black thongs showing,

boys with eyeliner, earrings,
          jittery, alluring,

Masters teasing challengers
          at stone chess tables,

a cellist with open case,
          hopeful singer at hand,

a smiling farmer selling high-priced greens
          to city slickers,

free-range eggs,
          as if the eggs themselves could walk.

On the plaza, dancers and protesters
          move in a mirrored minuet—
          shadows of skyscrapers join the dance.

Shaheen Dil is a reformed academic, banker and consultant who now devotes herself to poetry. She was born in Bangladesh, and lives in Pittsburgh. Her poems have been widely published in literary journals and anthologies. Her first full-length poetry collection, Acts of Deference, was published in 2016. Her second full-length poetry collection, The Boat-maker’s Art, was published from Kelsay Books in 2024. Shaheen is a member of the Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange, the DVP/US1 Poets, and the Porch Poets. She holds an AB from Vassar College, a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University, and a Ph.D. from Princeton University—leaving campus only when it was absolutely necessary to get a real job. 

Please note: Poetry is compressed to fit smart phone screens. If you are reading this poem on a phone screen, please turn your screen sideways to make sure that you are seeing correct line breaks for this poem.

“City of Pleasant Living” by Elizabeth S. Gunn

“This is because the caress is not
a simple stroking; it is a shaping.”
               – Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

drinking into familiarity –
               your orange raincoat…
               teaspoons tickling the side of hope –
               hopeful, let us

hypothesize in our unlit corner
               of Fox’s Lounge, Route One
               John Prine, Patsy Cline
               sugar with despair

spilling lapsed time, timing
               fingertips like frippery
               your braid behind a teacup
               ear listening to vintage chandeliers

like a desideratum
               a language, South Miami typesets
               | craving | Clevelander | aesthetics |
               amid our city’s deco chords

let us be here in the aquafer
               of humid desire the shape
               of anonymity in a sibylline song –
               the slyness of fox, the sadness of so long

Elizabeth S. Gunn (www.elizabethsgunn.com) serves as the Dean of the School of Arts, Sciences, and Business at Nevada State University. She writes poetry and fiction in Henderson, Nevada, where she and her wife live with their three rescue pups in the endless Mojave Desert.

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“Through Different Eyes” by John B. Mahaffie

Henry Aaron Makes History in Atlanta

ATLANTA, April 8, 1974–Atlanta Braves slugger Henry “Hank” Aaron edged into the record books tonight, passing the legend Babe Ruth as the leading home‐run hitter in baseball history. He slugged his 715th home run before a national television audience and 53,775 persons in Atlanta Stadium. Many hailed the achievement, but controversy emerged as some baseball analysts claimed the two sluggers did not face equal conditions, that in Babe Ruth’s time, the baseball itself was different, and that it was harder to hit home runs.

A white teenage boy waited for the Third Avenue bus. He was dressed in a Catholic school uniform and had a book bag over his shoulder. A grey-haired black man joined him at the bus stop. He carried a scuffed and dented lunch box in one hand, and the Daily News in the other. The man’s newspaper blazed in four-inch type, “715. Henry Does It!” The picture spread over half the front page, Hank Aaron, his dark skin against the white Braves uniform, arms driving the bat out and away.

The boy shrugged the bag off his shoulder and set it on the bus shelter bench. He flicked dark blond hair out of his eyes and smiled at the old man.

“Wasn’t that something last night?” he said.

“Oh my goodness yes.”

The man’s tired eyes twinkled alive.

They stepped back from the curb as an express bus hissed by. The boy leaned in for a moment to admire the front of the newspaper with the man. The man opened his paper and studied the article inside, a smile fixed in place.

The boy fiddled with his school tie, and looked up the street, then back at the man.

“Of course, it’s apples and oranges compared to Babe Ruth,” the boy said.

The man’s smile erased. 

“What do you mean?” 

The boy’s cheeks pinked. He swallowed.

“Well. . . it’s just. . . they say it’s not as hard. . . it was harder when Babe Ruth did it.” 

The man sighed through tight lips. He squared to look at the boy.

“You think this man had it easy?”

He tapped the cover of the Daily News with thick fingers.

The boy looked away. He raked the hair out of his eyes with his hand.

“Well it’s what people are saying.”

He stared off for a bus.

The man eyed the boy and folded his newspaper.

“It sure seems like as soon as a man does something great folk want to take it away from him,” the man said in a low voice.

The boy’s shoulders sagged. He looked back at the man in a sideways glance. He pushed his hands into his pockets.

“Well,” the boy said, “it’s because the ball was different then, it was harder. . .” His voice faded and he stopped at the man’s look. 

“Young man, I don’t think you understand.”

The man tucked his paper under his arm and edged to the curb, looking down the street for a bus.

The boy reached for the strap of his book bag, his shin barking against the edge of the bench. He stayed back.

They waited, neither speaking.

A bus slid up. The man climbed slowly on and moved toward the back. The boy got on and dropped into a side-facing seat near the front. He pinched his jacket collar closed at his neck. He studied the flecked linoleum between his loafers.

The old man gazed into the distance and they rode for a while.

The boy closed his eyes and then opened them and glanced back at the old man. He stared back down at his shoes. The bus whisked along.

Then the boy grabbed the stop request cord and yanked it. The bus jerked over to the curb. He looped on his book bag and stood. He eyed the man a last time, but when the man looked up he dropped his eyes and turned and got off the bus.

The old man watched him leave. He shook his head and opened his paper and began to read. The smile returned to his face.

John B. Mahaffie is a futurist with a love of the past. He writes short fiction and flash, and is at work on a novel. John’s fiction often explores the past. John lives and works in Washington, DC.

“Maastricht, 1496” by Jake Price

I never noticed architecture
until you kissed the flutes
in my cheekbones.
–
We sat on a park bench,
hands clasped together,
watching strangers and pointing out dormer noses
and bay window eye sockets.
My body turns to rubble when you smile.
I would never tell you that.
–
The arch of your spine, facade to facade,
Romanesque afternoons mixed with wine
and latticework and I exist I exist I exist.
–

                                       We   used      a      crumbling      statue    as    an      ashtray.

                                       I want   to marry  you here and then    go back to the States

                         and      forget      about   you.

Jake

Jake Price is a junior at Susquehanna University pursuing a degree in Creative Writing and a minor in Art History. He was born in Texas and currently resides in McConnellsburg Pennsylvania. He spends most of his time reading his work to his cat, Raven, who has yet to give him any feedback. His poetry has been published in Philadelphia Stories, The Poet Magazine, and The Viridian Door. His short fiction has been published in Cream Scene Carnival and Querencia Press.

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“Waking with the City” by Judith Rosner

How I love when Florence wakes and
we share the day’s beginning together.

I walk on stones polished by centuries of wear
as I sip my cappuccino and watch the moon

give up his seat to sun as she rises behind me
lighting buildings birthed in Middle Ages.

I check out recently shined shop windows
as street lamps blow out like birthday candles.

The Duomo, looming large, preens for me,
showing off her white and green marble stripes.

I wave as I pass, happy to see her before she is
blocked from view by tourists as they pose for pictures.

Statues lining piazzas flex their chiseled muscles
reminding me it’s time to plan my day.

Judith

Judith Rosner’s poetry appears in the literary journal HerWords, the Living Peace 2019 Art of Poetry Anthology, the Jewish Literary Journal, the Gulf Coast Poets Anthology, Harmonic Verse, and the Bards Against Hunger 10 Year Anniversary Anthology.  She holds a doctorate in sociology and retired from a successful career as professor, leadership developer, and executive coach.  Judy and her husband split their time between Sarasota, Florida and New York City.

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“A Walk Through Town” by VA Wiswell

1.

My favorite sweater, beautiful wool
cables burnt an olive green,
a fleet of the moment, flea
market purchase,
previously owned, I’d bet
money, by Father Time,
scratches my skin. A
living reminder, an existential
answer:
               I itch; therefore, I am.

2.

On my street, storefront lakes
of concrete and glass stretch
into infinity, I think to paddle
past, not in need or
want of anything, instead,
always in want and need of
something, I stop to peer at
the glittery trinkets napping on
their velvety pillows, bored of
the endless admiration. In the
window, a face of youth absconded
joins me. I imagine, then, a cartoony
thief sneakily stealing year after
year, their crime unnoticed by this
poor stranger until too late.

3.

Inside my favorite house,
affluent Arabica air, infused
with stranger-to-stranger
conversation, I wander to the
counter and toss my order,
complete in two extinct words:
               Black drip,
onto the barista’s counter.
Behind me, in the line of my past,
a thousand soft-skin dinosaurs
celebrate my retrogression by
stomping and laughing loudly.
With my order, molten lava
secured in a throwaway paper
cup, I stay for a beat, daring to dip
my toes into the house’s blend.
Around me, human thumbs crouch
like lions, hovering over bright
screens of prey, restless to swipe
at the first flash of light. Clutching
only my coffee, I stand out, a herring
in a field,
               bright
               and golden.

4.

Later, after hours locked in my time
capsule, a windowless space
heated with historical dust, I
manage to compress thoughts
that escaped days into bite-sized
bites, ideal for storage and
effortless consumption and
guilt-free disposal.

5.

Now, I stand lectern sturdy,
self-examined to the
bone, before a passel of
glossy, scrolling eyes,
a galaxy vast and black,
and listen to the leak of
a lifetime escaping
between us.

VA

VA Wiswell lives outside Seattle, WA, with her human and animal family. Her work has appeared in Writing In a Woman’s Voice, The Lake, Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine, 34th Parallel Magazine, Sad Girls Literary Magazine, Ignatian Literary Magazine, and OJA & L Magazine. She has poems and short stories forthcoming in Front Porch Review and Crab Creek Review. You can find her on Instagram at @vawiswell and http://www.vawiswell.com

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“Standing at the Edge of the World” by Christen Lee

Dylan, Cohen, and Cash wail melodies against the night sky,
sound waves amplified by these four walls
on which your own story is written in love and loss.

There’s something about the way you find hope
without hoping,
solace without soliciting, meaning without divining.
Just being here feels like salvation.

You’re not indifferent to this life you live
with its silver carpets, holly and honeysuckle-lined streets,
peeling birch and towering oak trees.
Just look at the azure sky, brandishing jewels on this golden
November day
where, together, we walk the crystal coastline,
press our feet into cool shallows,
steady our gaze upon an ocean that stretches beyond
the gold horizon.

In your backyard, grapefruit, lime and persimmon trees
sway with last season’s sweetness.
There are a thousand names for reinvention—
beauty begetting beauty, awakening from winter’s blight.
Today, you gather fresh mustard greens, cilantro,
blend hot chilies into chutney, simmer curry on the
stovetop.

We are so much more than what we make,
more than this returning bounty,
more than these cycles of giving and dying,
more than this hillside where you lead me
to show me the glowing city.

You could have all this, you say, tiny worlds
dancing at our feet,
dust and shadow parting ways for the starlight in our eyes.
You could make another life out here, but you know,
you can’t escape the hurt.
Even what’s lost can find you. It can buoy you
or it can drown you.

Keep close the memory of all who’ve gone before you.
Press your heart against the jagged edges of your pain
and bleed a bittersweet offering.

Savor the good, the unfiltered, the unholy potion,
ripened beneath an enchanted sun.
Believe in everything that brought you here,
while trusting nothing that promises you forever.

The world withers, you say.
Everything, someday, goes away.
But even then, even at the very end,
we’ll still be standing here.
Somewhere at the edge of the world.

Christen Lee

Christen Lee is a family nurse practitioner in Cleveland, Ohio. Her writing has been featured in Rue Scribe, The Write Launch, Aurora, Humans of the World, Sad Girls Club, 2022 New Generation Beats Anthology, Wingless Dreamer, The Voices of Real 7 Compilation, Ariel Chart, The Elevation Review, and Moot Point among others.

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“Above the City Tracks” by Alexander Etheridge

The train moves far below this tower room
with a sound like a slowly drawn-out gunfire,
a strangely underworld story
unfolding—a question to an answer, coming apart
inside the mind. In the landscape of God’s ceaseless
memory, human thought grows backward and turns
from snow into time. In those outer fields, forgotten prayers
are common as dustgrains, and shreds of hope
define themselves on a background of burning seeds
and jagged hail. At a certain point, joy becomes an answer
to ongoing silence, like the peace of a star as it begins
collapsing, a spellbound amnesia returning to the heart,
and leaves of grief becoming rain on the rail line.

Alexander

Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998. His poems have been featured in The Potomac Review, Museum of Americana, Ink Sac, Welter Journal, The Cafe Review, The Madrigal, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, Roi Faineant Press, and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999, and a finalist for the Kingdoms in the Wild Poetry Prize in 2022. He is the author of, God Said Fire, and the forthcoming, Snowfire and Home.

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“Daydreams and Prayers in the City” by Alexander Etheridge

I can see what I want in people—You, stranger,
I think to myself, you with the empty gaze

are the beautiful Eden snake, and you with the sad eyes
are an apple from the one forbidden tree.

I can see in the world another world.
I can dream up apocalypse or creation

in any landscape, corner, or shadow of the city.
Why else should I go anywhere, and why else

should I look into anything? I bring with me everywhere
a few grains of nightmare and paradise, I keep them hidden

in my pockets with my pen and my crumpled paper. What now
gives me faith in anything? The barely discriminating love

of dogs, the judgelessness of dusk and dawn,
the absolute indifference of black empty galaxies,

and all that exists without a question—
Even in the punishing chill of my mind,

I can find a shred of love, a thread of
compassion—they live there without a doubt,

or need of gratitude. I pray they imprint onto me
their pure design, their ancient elegance,

even in fields of hail, or on mountains of frost—
In the ongoing cold I look for salvation. Find me,

I say, find me even now, where I’m without name
or shape, or even a memory of light.

Alexander

Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998. His poems have been featured in The Potomac Review, Museum of Americana, Ink Sac, Welter Journal, The Cafe Review, The Madrigal, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, Roi Faineant Press, and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999, and a finalist for the Kingdoms in the Wild Poetry Prize in 2022. He is the author of, God Said Fire, and the forthcoming, Snowfire and Home.

Please note: Poetry is compressed to fit smart phone screens. If you are reading this poem on a phone screen, please turn your screen sideways to make sure that you are seeing correct line breaks for this poem.