September 2004 – Page 3

Coney Island Avenue

Beans and pumpkin, seeming to lend ingenuity to the otherwise concrete garden,

coil up lavishly out of immigrant yearning, mixing pleasure and labor,

as if vegetables were hovering at the margin of a curry.

This deliciousness whose traditions have become so eclectic,

long beans, shoes on the stoop. Kazim El Saher’s chorus

tracing forever the marvelous alarms of the sonic, the doum and the

tek and the doum doum tek a tek doum tek a tek. Beside the gelding rolling

in the dust, the limpid tosses of its wavy mane, the stained glass windows

of the baptist church. It’s there the B68 bus catches me with a groan and a squeal

of hardcore diesel, rolling past Caribbean life — red Elmo doll

clutched by Hispanic man in his 30s — his green plastic bracelets — he’s yelling

as we go past Sonali grocery like discovering nothing in his pocket as it has all flown away.

Transfer d’Argent a Haiti. International calling center penetrates global immodesty

borne from Iraq and Siam, suspended by telephone wires from moons in alternate cultural systems: electrical analysis of pistachios, desi kulfi, tortillas

at the Good Luck Deli. BANIA. Masjid Um ul Quaa, Siberian Pelman corp.

I scintillate at the window of ice and it is all for you: Shandar Sweets, Giant

Detail Center, Office of Mughal Waterproofing, exhalations and filthiness falling

among the vegetables, entertaining notions of a scarf dance on a subway.

Blair Mazzarella Funeral Home, a girl’s braids come undone, her mother’s earring

a gold tooth. [cocktail] lounge Bukhara catering hall Quicinera Las Mariachis Raja Realty Honey locksmith smartbeep beepers kaloshi real estate. Adam & Eve Unisex —

(a warrior of either sex in the distances which are American) — Pharmacy, Farmacia,

Anteka plus Urdu and Bengali.

Recharge here — Lahore fashions — Bahar shishkebab chum chum, aloo chat — [goat pic]

halal meat khoobsurat beauty salon (ladies only) — one black headscarf, one white head scarf,

one yarmulke on a head of greasy spikes like circumcision of a black horse

by the Urdu Bazaar. I decorate the forest of my regard, caressing the route: Lung Wah Kitchen, Weinstein-Garlick-Kirschenbaum Chapels, Pak-O-Hind, Russian, Kosher groceries,

Rabbi Hecht’s Esrogim Center. The longing to be modern and sheltered and different

and insane and decorative as Hecht’s skullcap company, Judaica seforim gifts & religious articles, abysmal elevation and cantankerous filaments. Sweet Art’s Stitch & Stictch, Full line of beans. Adult novelties: “Intimate Fantasy’s” — Visions in wigs — Hat’s Plus, Freund’s Family Shop. A gasp of laughter at desire, and disorder, and dying, and Gigi’s Wig Salon.

The violent alabaster of curiosity yields to the sky of undulant spiritual contamination,

the luminous enlacement of brilliant dryness and the lump and crush of archness. Kloz

Klozet! Sukkah Depot, Yeshivah ohr Shraga Veretzky Shorashim Monuments sushi Kosher

Immense flapping. Extremely hairy arm on a thin woman, a mother. Assymetrical face

of a yeshivah girl by Miss Liberty Restaurant, her simple vagueness. Is your throat dry with the deviousness of following? Mittelman’s Supermarket. Straight wigs, pearls. Kosher Bissaleh. Tiger Mart. Exxon Shocks and Struts — lean, achieved, ravished, acute, light, lissome in whispering and salivary in intent. Taci’s Beyti. Bertolino’s. Moshi Moshi

Glatt Kosher. Welcome to the age of independence in a leopard dress and orchid nails.

Big! white! Kackie O glasses! Kish Koosh playgroup, the bamboo veils of intemperance

flapping down with tigerish yaps over the one and only Sahara Restaurant by the World of

doors.

1-800-cultural collision. Red Square Restaurant. Hadn’t the cannery sent forth perfume/ Hebrew National Hot Dog, Special Touch lingerie like an elephant in a skirmish. Siren

Fresh beer. Angeliakis Construction new Times Good Year Tuxedo Palace.

Does it look magical or realistic, the view from the bus window? The historic duel disappears

like an ape at night, Who is “they”? The Westerners, of course, the tumbling vipers

aware of history as rods stippling the dip of an imperialistic road map. Rasputin.

Super tan. Thinny-thin. 99 cents the limit. Plaster Gallery, Kiev Bakery. Exciting

delicious historical Sheepshead Bay, candidly. The past, the sensations of the past. Now!

in cuneiform, of umbrella satrap square carts with hotdogs and onions of red syrup

blended, Ritz look, bobcat service, rubbish removal excavation pelvic exam pap smear blood test cold soda! And then the paralyzing rush of emotion: grace infuses whirling faces

with a dissonant gaiety.

If you happen to see the latest Utne Reader in your acupuncturist’s office, as I did, have a look at the article about America’s poetry phobia.

It’s a stupid article that relies mostly on Dana Gioa’s “Can Poetry Matter” for its notions, but towards the end it quotes a poem of Ange Mlinko’s as an example of “inaccessible”, “intellectual” poetry — although I would never use either of these terms to describe Ange’s poetry. The quote from her poem is the only thing even remotely readable in the article, and it’s amusing to watch how the author tentatively creeps up to it, finally allowing that we all have the tools to read the poem, which neither alludes to arcane theories nor employs any thousand-dollar words.

Utne Reader is a patronizing magazine that insults its readers.

Read Harper’s instead.