The Horses: New & Selected Poems

1650 Broadway

123 1650 broAdwAy The Great White Way photo on her refrigerator looking north on Broadway from Times Square 40s cabs shiny rainy look to the pavement I felt something begin to flow cut loose from our unsayable particulars “A pretty girl is like a melody” the sound of traffic windy sound of years glint of them faces and faces alien and young and just around a corner from familiarity My father’s office was up there 1650 Broadway nested in those blocks of buildings singers and dog acts comedians boxers He might have been up there bullshitting on the phone sharp sweet face somewhere in the interference patterns the waves and bouncing waves of rainy light that made that photograph My father in the larger rise and fall of New York Jewish music show biz “To let my Daddy go to feel the cats the rhythm flow the black girls dancing in a row” Only that was a power vision like when I was a kid 124 and saw my bones on Dr. Chomski’s fluoroscope I’d slip my hand behind the screen and there they were carpals metacarpals mortal hand But in the hospital I saw his bones with my naked eyes the orbits of his skull And where does she come in my baby my young lover? Contingency only touching like when my mother called us in Berkeley at 2 AM her gutted voice “Your pop is dead” We had just come home were getting ready to make love and she threw her body down on mine held us touching down our lengths hard as if she were holding me together split screen between flesh and bones Contingency like the photo on her refrigerator a key an avenue 125 We never were your typical Norman Rockwell father and son “Daddy and Sonny” was his phrase He was more my playmate “My two boys” my mother called us I always knew she loved me more most And I never was afraid of him He only hit me once when I called my mother a “dirty pig” He slung me ferociously over his shoulder carried me up the long hall to my room I felt him melting with each step The rage had been mostly for Mommy’s benefit In my room he dumped me on my bed tapped me with his belt buckle and fled The flip side was I never respected him I was ashamed of him my timid daddy who always wanted to “go home to Mommy” when things got tough who told me turning seventy of his terror in the subways strangers the closeness that he’d lose control and shit his pants who told me later well in his eighties of his stuttering as a boy of his fear of people that he masked 126 in the drinking that made him brave He felt like a “failure” in his life a “coward” because he never “made a million dollars” because he chose instead to be liked “Honest Al” roasted by the Lambs Club stood to drinks in every bar on Broadway But my father’s special genius was his silliness “Did you get my drift or do I have to snow again?” “A pretty gi-i-rl is like an elepha-a-ant” If you asked him “What?” he’d say “Turkey trot” When I called him “Pop” he’d call me “Shmop” And he babbled talked baby talk not so much for Mom and me he was his own man in the fullness of his pleasures but in our company with us as audience Perhaps his masterpiece —I transliterate—was “Gock giddy geek gock gook-gook-gook” He was a profoundly silly man The particular brilliance of this phrase is that with minor variations it’s a universal lyric It goes with any tune Try it with the tune of your choice 127 And so I babble too speechify necromancy of the saving metaphor stare decisus starry deceased To let my daddy go I hated him briefly when I was fourteen pumping in urgent modelless macho but that exploded quickly passed and I loved him tenderly as he became an old and then a very old man Pop Poppiddy I called him reversing the baby talk or just Poppy like a flower He was listed in a couple of...