ALTE #17

Jessica de Koninck

THE CROSSING

The welders wove a web of lace

across the river. Cars like gleaming beads

thread their way from shore to shore.

I stroll midway between clouds and water,

beaming as if I got a raise, as if

I were in love. Just this sunny day.

Time delights me. A walk

across the bridge

and back again.

Lawrence Bush

CROSSING GUARDS

In the sixth grade, my best friend Robert Cantor and I were appointed by our teacher, Mrs. Gilbert, to be crossing guards. This meant leaving class about twenty minutes before dismissal, putting on our white plastic crossing guard bandoliers, walking about three blocks from school, and waiting for kids to arrive at the corner where we stood.

We would then go stand in the middle of 110th Street and hold up our hands and stop cars from proceeding, essentially by daring them to knock us down. Then we’d tell the kids to cross.

I don’t believe we were supposed to do the job that way, but no one had really been clear about the do’s and don’ts of being a crossing guard.

The job was fun but also embarrassing: embarrassing to be singled out by Mrs. Gilbert, embarrassing to have the privilege of leaving class, embarrassing because the white sashes looked idiotic, embarrassing to tell kids when they could or couldn’t cross. I was happy to feel special, and greatly relieved when, after a month or so, Mrs. Gilbert asked us to turn in our bandoliers.

Bea Elderbee, “Cross My Heart” and “Cross-Outs”

Meyer Rothberg

89+

At 89+, I attend closely to the news of men who are much older than me: Dick Van Dyck, Mel Brooks, my friend's father, living independently at 104 in South Africa. Inspirations.

And, then, I think of my old Bronx friends, now gone like Red at 90, the Best Man at our wedding as I was at his, and the very few still with me. And more recent friends and acquaintances; some gone, some with us. Some widowed; some healthier than their partners, some less so.

I recall 79 when I felt quite "young," and when turning 80 made a big impression! I smile at folks who think of 70s as getting old. One of my oldest friends - I took her to her HS prom - will turn 86 in June, thinks of herself as 68 because that's how she feels! Considerable spirit! She cared for her husband through Alzheimer's until he died and, now, has a daughter in her 50s with Alzheimer's!

But enough of end of life thought! Let's all of us reading this piece rejoice in our age! Onward Mostly Jewish Soldiers! To Victory! Let's be the generation that lives forever! Or, at least, til November 2028 when we trade our evil, crazy President and his evil minions for a good, normal President and Congress! That'll be a crossing.

Steve Wishnia

RITES OF PASSAGE

Age 34.

I’d never taken a laxative before.

The brand with the dusty green bottles

That fill the windows of phony bodegas selling heroin

It works well enough

That I have to stop after three blocks at the laundromat bathroom

To avert an environmental disaster on the 14thStreet bus.

An hour later

I’m bent over the examining table

With the doctor’s rubber-gloved finger up my ass

Palpating my boggy prostate

And I’m thinking:

“This is my rite of passage into middle age.”

Age 64.

The codeine peacekeepers

Are failing to quell

The migraine paramilitaries of Cerebromia.

A hot bath and a joint sound like a good idea.

It is.

Leaning on my elbow to climb out isn’t.

My ribs crash into the slippery rim

And for two days

I feel like a brittle octogenarian

Barely able to cross the street.

A few weeks later

Camera and surgical tools up my urethra

To install six clamps

Corsets to constrain my enlarged prostate

Six staplegun-shot sounds later

I am released

With a temporary catheter

And a drainable plastic bag full of bloody urine

Which in the future will provide a metaphor

For the war in Gaza.

A few weeks after that

Outside a maternity ward in Austin, Texas

Waiting

For hours.

“You’ll hear a lullaby when she comes,” a volunteer says.

I’m thinking, “Oy, the-universe-will-let-you-know nonsense.”

But a few minutes later

A lullaby plays on the hospital PA

And my son texts me a picture.

She’s lying under eerie

Winter-blue lights

And squeezes my finger

With her hand.

When I get to hold her

Rocking her cautiously

In nervous naches

Sheer joy at the very existence

Of this new human

With just-opened orbs of curiosity 

And then she spits up

On my orange T-shirt.

Dana Jacobs

Lawrence Bush

Trevor Foulstone

OLD BULLS AND PEARLS

The screaming old bulls
standing arse to arse
in this football arena
demand another encore

Black bucket hats hiding their balding heads,
black T-shirts once new,
the logo of the band now stretches taut around their girth and memories

In the dark,
people sway
and shout the well-worn lyrics

Two seats over —
a soft cream light shimmers
where the woman sits

Wearing a blue and white striped woollen top,
beige ballerina shoes

and in each ear
a single cream drop pearl
catches the lustre of the day’s fading light —
like the worn red rose
inked on her wrist

As her fingers dance across the glass,
texting her children goodnight,

under her breath,
she whispers yesterday’s song.

Helen Engelhardt

IF I FORGET THEE O JERUSALEM

I forget Cheshvan full moon

Kotel murmurous with prayer women

squeezing into less than half the sacred

space petitions slipped into cracks

of grieving stones. I forget his yahrtzeit

walking down Zion to the base of the mountain

thinking all gates lead to the bridge back

to the city without walls

but young men are covering their faces

with black cloths and gathering torches.

They do not see me yet, or do not care

I have wandered into their world.

A man drives me back across

the valley back to the world I come from

the fifteenth year after the assassination.

If I forget thee O Jerusalem,

I forget the kindness of the Arab

in the Souk bringing me juice in the heat

of the afternoon, offering me a seat

in his tiny shop searching for sandals to fit

the soles of my feet.

Esther Cohen

Jessica de Koninck

JERUSALEM

Not the vestiges of Wall

pressed with paper prayers

Not the Temple, the dome, the rock

Not the line for women

the line for men

Not headscarves

Not orange groves

Not the Arab quarter

the Jewish quarter

the twelve stations of the Cross

Not the Cross

nor wood

nor nails

Not the monastery in the valley

across from the Knesset

Not Yad Vashem

nor the Six Million

Not Ishmael, not Isaac

Not olive trees, not land

But a quiet booth

at a diner

in Maplewood, New Jersey

a bowl of soup

a buttered roll

a cup of tea

Wendy Saul

CROSSING THE HUDSON

To get to my great-grandmother’s funeral in Hunter, NY in 1920, her Brooklyn children and their families must have taken a subway to Manhattan, crossed on the Weehawken, NJ Ferry, and picked up the West Shore Railroad that ran trains to Kingston or Catskill. From Kingston they boarded the Delaware and Ulster Railroad to Tannersville where they were met by Miriam and Zusel’s (Mary and Sussman’s) son, Uncle Joe.

On Oct 25, 1931, my mother, then 14, rode in her father’s chauffeur-driven car across the George Washington Bridge the day it opened. Truly a spectacular high-wire view as they crossed from New Jersey to New York.

“The Bridge is open! “my father exclaimed in December, 1955 as we used the Tappan Zee for the first time.  “So close to the water!,” we screamed.

The world's longest elevated pedestrian bridge (1.28 miles) is a Hudson River conversion that transformed the historic 1889 Poughkeepsie-Highland Railroad Bridge into a scenic park. As I walk across the river, I think of Eleanor Roosevelt cutting the ribbon in 1930 at the bridge I see just to the north, the Mid-Hudson Bridge.

Today my “Easy-Pass” tracks my easy trips back and forth across the river, a river as beautiful as ever there was one.

Jessica de Koninck

1956 Nash Rambler Cross Country Station Wagon

Silvery gray steel, shiny white, candy apple green,

waxed and shining in the afternoon sun.

Fast cars, hot cars, hatchbacks, hard tops, roadsters.

Look at me. Look at me.

Fire engine red. Lipstick red. Ripe tomato red.

Arrest me red, we used to call it.

The automobile is the United States of America,

Or the United States of America is the automobile

Or it was. Or they were.

Beautiful once, too, like us,

coveted for flash, or horsepower

or even usefulness. Troubadours

penned songs about their colors

and their contours.

In the boxes filled with Paul’s notebooks

that come with me

each time I move

there are hundreds of drawings.

and designs for cars and motorcycles.

They smoked. They raced.

   Tires squealed.

Songs about cars were America

and the United Auto Workers were America

and the Red Scare was America

My mother would sooner walk than buy a Ford,

Henry Ford, an antisemite

and a racist.

Aging with loose springs and worn suspensions

sturdy wagons hauled kids and groceries

and Dads, home from work.

Early in his career

Paul designed Auto Show exhibits.

Rotating platforms, lights, signs

that travelled from city to city. I would join

him at the New York show.

Until luck brought me a son and

I could avoid those hours peering under hoods, opening doors, examining the latest sports cars, hybrids and compacts.

They would stay the whole day.

I can hardly distinguish one car from another

If I am lucky

I remember the color.

Paul could identify any motorcycle

by its sound.

‍ ‍Woodies were a staple

of the suburban vista.

They disappeared. It took me years to notice.

One of Paul’s drawings,

a motorcycle in the shape of a heart

with a smiling face,

hung on the wall for many years. It’s vanished.

I continue to wait

for the irrevocably lost

to reappear.

Our parents survived the Great Depression

and the War. We were the promise of the future.

We were Tomorrowland.

The automobile would take us there.

America

has fallen out of love.

Junk yards full of faded metal and clunkers scatter

the landscape—

sideview mirrors, front end panels,

headlight mounts and radiators available.

Mustang convertibles, once sexy,

now collected by old men

whose engines falter.

Gone the way

of rock and roll, a relic.

To the remote places where people abandon

what they once loved most,

go the wrecks, the broken, the irreparable, the future.

Nothing gold remains, said Frost.

Not even the work of our hands, say I.

Chrome and steel succumb

to the slow fire of rust.

Leather seats and vinyl dashboards,

like us, peel and turn to dust.

Lawrence Bush

Jane Tainow Feder

CROSSING

My kid sister died in December. Spirit collapses; unbearable silence thunders; where’s my leg? my heart?  I come undone. Thinly masked hysteria follows for months.  All the surgeons agree; so much pain! Give her a new shoulder, a knee, a hip—now!  Then, felled by prolonged and ultra-breathless asthma, I skid to a stop. To breathe. To sleep. Time to wonder where I had gone.  

She knew; my sister knew,  The sabbath eve, her last sabbath eve just prior to relenting to delirium, she whispered to me, “You know, love continues into death.” 

She was cremated; the kind of end she chose for her many beloved cats and dogs. 

My children and I took our time to part with all but a tiny bit of their ashes.  When we did, we knew she’d love the shore just as she and her pups loved to swim.  

We took her ashes and those of her adored pets and mindful of the wind and the surf scattered my precious sister’s and her pets’ ashes.  Before we even finished, there arose in the sand 

Gail Kinn

Joyce Greenberg Lott

CROSSING OVER

It’s like swimming under water with your eyes closed

so the salt water won’t sting them bloodshot.

All you know is your own body separating the sea.

Someone gives you snorkeling gear,

tells you to wipe your spit across the lens

and push the mask low on your nose.

You fit the tip of the snorkel over your gums,

like the wax teeth you ate as a kid,

and when you go under this time you can see

purple sea fans and queen angelfish,

blue parrotfish and grooved brain coral,

red grouper and corky sea fingers.

And all the time you’re doing the dead man’s float,

you know that your body is only a visitor.

Still, you can breathe and breathe and breathe.

Lawrence Bush

Lori Frankel

CROSS PURPOSES

Scene 1: A living room

HE: You just don't understand.

SHE: I think I do.

HE: No, no, you don't understand.

SHE: Right. I don't understand. All too well. (She storms out)

Scene 2: A bar

HE: My wife understands me.

BARTENDER (stops wiping bar, pauses): You mean, she doesn't understand you.

HE: All too well.

Scene 3: A café

SHE (to her FRIEND): I don't understand him at all.

Scene 4: A therapist's office

HE: But she doesn't understand, not really. I mean, I know she tries, but she just can't know. It's not her fault. It's not as if I blame her.

HIS THERAPIST: But you do. It obviously makes you angry that she can't understand.

HE: No, no, I really don't blame her. It's just, I don't want her thinking she understands when she doesn't. It strikes me as dishonest.

HIS THERAPIST: So you'd rather be right than have a relationship.

Scene 5: A therapist's office

SHE: He just drives me nuts. I'm never allowed to understand him.

HER THERAPIST: Do you think you do?

SHE: Well, yes, I think so. That is, at least to some extent. I mean, how much can we really understand each other? But I don't count that, I just mean, you know, the kind of surface stuff. There is stuff we can understand, isn't there?

HER THERAPIST: It's really important to you to think you understand, isn't it? Do you feel you lose control if you admit you don't?

Scene 6: A living room

HE: I'm sorry I said that, about your not understanding. That wasn't fair.

SHE: No, no, you're right, I don't really understand.

HE (catches her hands in his): Hey, no, you're one of the most understanding people I know.

SHE: No, no, it's all part of a power trip, a control trip.

HE: Are you kidding? You? Who've you been talking to?

SHE (Pulls her hands from his): What do you mean? Why do you say that?

HE: Nothing, no reason, I just—have you been talking to someone? I'm just curious.

SHE: You have to be right, no matter what, don't you?

HE: Why do you have to make a mystery out of something perfectly simple?

(They exit to opposite ends)

Esther Cohen

CROSSING:  A MURDER MYSTERY

Susan Schwartz, 73, was walking across 79th Street towards Broadway when shE noticed, almost as though it had been there forever, an actual body.  Dead.  A man oF indeterminate age, wearing what looked like an imitation Burberry raincoat. An addict of Scandinavian and British TV mysteries, especially those with Lesley Manville, she decided she’d figure this one out.  So she went into Liquor Liquor, an overpriced wine shop on the corner, and asked Igor the manager Who Did It.  Igor was a smart man.  He said the dead man was William from apartment 36 in the building above the store.  His girlfriend Rose, sad Igor. They were a contentious couple. She wanted to make it seem as though he just had a heart attack.  I’m sure she poisoned him.  So Susan went into the building, rang the bell of apartment 36,  and confronted Rose. “Did you kill William?” she asked the frazzled woman who came to  the door. “I did,” said Rose. And that was that.