women with cars

i could have driven her somewhere

from the corner of my block 

car stopped for a moment

red light, radio blaring the news

she pounds on my window

begging, words i barely hear

only his reassurance, to me

but i'm her husband

her husband- yes

that's what i was afraid of

Ariana told me- in the women's group

most if them have jumped

from moving cars

some on the highway

to escape men

i could have driven her somewhere

the sick dance happened so fast

two bodies circling my car

my own arms, reaching and retracting

to pull up the lock, find my cellphone

neither motions i could commit to 

Tracy's voice haunted me as a child-

won't do no good to call

the police

always come late

if they come at all

and when they arrive...

i could have driven her somewhere

to a sister or a cousin

across a state border

yes of course i will help you

yes we are both women

Audre begins Zami with dedications

i read only yesterday

one for a small white girl

screaming for help on a dark street

and when the car door opens to her

girl runs, terrified by her rescuer's color

back towards that man, white

his boots rounding the corner

she, Audre says, will die stupid

i could have driven her somewhere

but if anyone in the bus stop crowd

judged me, i do not know

they stood, silent greek chorus

as if this is what happens

every time we wait for the B11,

a red light

Zach says they could be con-artists

trying to get in my car

i did the right thing

yes, i say but i don't think so

and to him, to all the boys 

that is the end

but i am bent over

in the guise of touching my toes

to cry, unseen, steady this shaking

this churning stomach

i could have driven her somewhere

circled back around the block

picked her up out of sight

away from the man, the bus stop

but don't think of it

until i'm fifteen blocks too late

too late- it happened too fast

drive on, try to clear my vision

see the road behind my wheel

and later, i lie in bed

window open a crack

(radiator too high) and the cars

on the BQE are a part-time waterfall

my own car parked underneath

sheltered from snow and

i can drive anywhere, anytime 

my day, fades behind me

the disturbing way these things become

stories we tell later

every poem is you, brooklyn

i swear this platform shakes

as wind blows over Mcdonald Ave

we wait, spitting into space,

level with tops of brick apartments, warehouses 

selling wooden doors and tombstones. 

here someone has written

Hiroshima ain't nothing compared

--never finished or maybe obscured 

by illegible tags, making this line's neat print

all the more glaring.

i reentered this city on my own,

a shrinking circle of daily listening,

expanding net of unknowns--

a best friend crying beside me

on a bench on a street near childhood.

we are grown and i don't know if she wants

to be held (i always do.)

the bodies around us keep moving

talking of how it smells like rain,

getting in and out of cars, carrying groceries,

talking loudly, adjusting their clothes.

i swear i have been here most my life--

eaten various flat breads, chickpeas and lentils.

in some shops, barbers, sign-painters, cooks, musicians

know my name and want me to join them for tea--

this is no secret city, not the first time

i've seen you- sang along

you look like a city but you feel like religion to me

oh!  i want to be able to leave you

and there is nowhere else to go.

i want you inside me,

whispering through my pores as i sleep.

i walked home talking loudly, holding my pants in place,

past curses and kisses, and it never did rain.

woke in a pool of sweat, an unseasonably hot morning.

today, the subway like so many times,

waiting above ground, swooshing around phlegm

in our cheeks before letting it go,

launching it into quivering space.

today like so many times

i want to know just what you did to me,

but i cannot see everything.

another new yorker's rant on the g-word

GENTRIFICATION

an out-of-town friend who was visiting me in brooklyn recently noted that i use the g-word too many times a day. and, meeting with 2 friends from high school, i noticed that they do this too. but don't we new yorkers have good reason to be obsessed? leave your neighborhood for a few months and upon return, you may not recognize it.

when my mom moved to park slope in the '70s, she moved there because it was affordable and she was a poor artist, putting herself through brooklyn college on the small funds from her dad's child-support checks. like me, she was a brooklyn girl born and raised (i am 3rd generation), but unlike me, she had no idea of what gentrification can do. it was just beginning and she was unknowingly part of the process. the yuppie haven that is now park slope, and that my mother and i now complain wildly about, was partially her own creation. it's the now typical story-- when she moved in, it was a working-class neighborhood and folks like her were moving in- college students and artists (she was both.)  we now know that those folks make an area more desirable and trendy, increasing the rents so that soon the families who lived there are forced to leave and the young folks can't afford to live there anymore either.  this is the very simplified narrative anyway.  but what responsibility do i have as a recent college grad, artist, and whitey?  i cannot claim the ignorance that my mother has a right to.

i started this post many months ago.  i've been ranting about this for years.  but now, for the first time, i am looking for my own brooklyn apartment.  i am not looking in park slope (couldn't afford to even if i wanted.)  i am not looking in williamsburg.  or bushwick.  or bedstuy.  i do not want to join the hoards of recent graduates from my college who are moving there-- the many hipsters who are trying on brooklyn for size along with their tight pants.  at an event for graduating seniors at my college, a dean made a comment about students moving to san francisco, portland, chicago, and brooklyn.  as if brooklyn was a city too, and certainly a major destination.

there are many articles about gentrification dotting new york papers these days.  but most focus on older yuppies, the white families with fancy strollers who block off park slope's street corners.  but what about us 20-somethings?  park slope is long gone to this great gentrifying process.  what about the renters on the outskirts of these neighborhoods, moving into neighborhoods where their young, single, whiteness is even more visually obvious?

what terrifies me is that we know what we're doing.  last summer i met a woman who had just graduated from brandeis and was doing teach for america in a tough brooklyn school.  she had grown up on the upper west side, gone to private schools her whole life.  and now she was living in what used to be called sunset park and is now "south slope".  she said the block she was living on was "violently gentrifying" with tangible anger from long-time hispanic residents.  she knew her presence there wasn't helping.  she seemed to feel bad about it.  but, "what can i do?" she said.  and i have heard this so many times.  us recent college grads, we've studied gentrification in classes.  we know how to talk about, problematize, identify oppression.  and we can sometimes even recognize our part in it.  we know the language but we know no action.  we feel powerless to stop the systems we criticize, to extricate ourselves from them.  we nestle into academicized white guilt.  or maybe we just don't care?  call me corny, or un-hip, but i do care.  and i grew up in brooklyn.  but does that matter?  maybe i'm just as confused, just as helpless, white, just as much of a gentrifier as the next kid.  

i told you some of the neighborhoods i'm not moving to.  so where can i move?  today i looked at an apartment in flatbush, not far from where i grew up and where my father still lives.  a chasidic man named joe showed me the place.  walking to the apartment building, he sang the praises of the neighborhood, the building.  he told me about the dunkin' donuts as if it was a draw to live there.  i remember when that opened and how pissed i was.  "i don't like dunkin donuts," i said.  he bragged about how safe the apartment building is, pointed out the security cameras multiple times.  "the building is changing," he said. "we're getting rid of all the irresponsible people.  people like you are moving in. i just sold a 3 bedroom to a woman just like you."  (now who is people like me?  how does he know what i'm like?)  and when we got in the elevator, a black man got in with us.  i said hi to him, and he said goodbye when he got off on the 3rd floor.  as soon as the elevator door closed, joe repeated that his management company was really cleaning up the building.  they want tenants like me.  "so you're evicting people?"  i asked.  "yes," he said proudly.  and when i told him i'm starting a new job, i don't have the 3 pay stubs i supposedly need for the place- "no problem," he said.  so accommodating for people like me.  and it was a nice apartment too.

there's so much more that can be said.  for now, a small selection of some articles i've collected:

• gag-inducing article on brooklyn's changing real estate 
  
• fascinating article about the chasids and williamsburg
• article from the viewpoint of a park slope parent
• article about youth-led anti-gentrification movements
• guitarist Mark Ribot's article on the lack of financial support for new music (an expansion of how gentrification effects nyc)