Neighborhoods of Miami along 79th Street, Miami, Florida

79TH STREET RAGA

salt air ruffles in substantial as crystal
and sparkling night glitters
as if polished by sea breeze

MIAMI BEACH

Hunched by a fragmented casement,
A scarlet-and-ocher-haired
Mohawk, late 20th century,
With calendars and states of mind
Bobbing from her ears--
Mu, a cross, infinity--
Is chained to reality:
Her belly swelling with another world inside.
She says, "Mister, this kid's
Got a momma.  His dad's
Just a heart breaker."
Then a masculine earth
With a man underneath
Heaves from the shadows,
Spits and splits--none
Of these worlds are his.
I guess.  She says, "Will
This kid be bright and strong?"
A smile jerks a crooked trail
Across her lips.  "Could I be wrong?"
I pour sand from my hand;
She watches it tumble and drift
In time and wind.

night is fired with cold stars
and wind presses like the touch
of former lovers

NORMANDY ISLES

Down the street, by the synagogue,
An ancient holocaust victim,
Cut adrift from the anchor of terror,
Nods his yarmulke
Over a notched and grooved face.
I say, "Mister, can you . . . ?"
He nods again, turns searching--
Yahweh will help if--"Min tahkter,"
He says.  "Doctor?  No, I don't . . . "
I say.  He fingers the sausage
Number on his yellowing skin.
Then hurrying forth, a curled head
Barks, "Tahteh, Tahteh."
Then at me.  "He speaks no English."
He says, "Helft Meer."
And she--a shawl--stands between
My wind and his earth.
She's bright and strong.
He the kinder, der kleine kinder.
She holds his fantasy in womb.
Evil, like a  trail of gnats,
Will not leave the fruit
Of his earth.  "Min Tahkter,"
He says, explaining all.

river and sea mix
scents and hold me
in a limbo of air

LEMON CITY

The people smile when they talk.
Old clothes hang with dignity,
Cleaned and pressed like ancient lace.
La mere of the laughing face
Wears a bandanna and a cotton dress
And L'enfant cradled
like a treasure from her womb.
She rocks it.  "Dieu est gran.
Dieu est bien.  Somme venu par
La mer--Haiti au Miami.
En Haiti--doleur au coeur;
En Miami la famille est
heureux."  I listen and my heart
Finds these colors in the shadows:
The vibrant tongue, the shining clothes.
"Cinq," she cries, holding
Up five fingers. "Cinq
Mourent en route."
They died.  L'enfant lives.

air covers me
like a smoky quilt so
i strain for sea breeze

LIBERTY CITY

Dark as a shadow
But beefy as a thoroughbred,
He leans against the battered wall.
"Pork an' beans
Rime with mean, an' I
Ain't seen nothin' but mean in my life,"
He says pressing the wall
With its rusty, scaly skin.
"I got two chaps, an' I
I keeps their bellies full.
Show me green, an' you
Got your boy, 'cept I
Don' steal an' I don' kill.
That's for them meaner still.
That ol' boy they killed,
He was pain, should'a died
Long ago.  Had it comin',
Had that whole 'partment to hisself,
The ol' chump.  Now, maybe,
Some fambly--like mines--
Two chaps an' an ol' lady--
Can have room.  Can
Breathe a little.  Have
Some style an' some class.
Be talkin' sweet to each other.
Life is short.  Hard as two walls:
The one you left,
The one you runnin' into."
He turns and pisses against the wall,
The defiant, humorless wall.

air purls up from canals
salty sediment rich as yuca
musty as old beans left out

HIALEAH

El viejo, around whose head
His cigar smoke curls like memory
Under the bust of Jose Martí--
Become one with him in the swirl
Of smoke--says, "I have some
Of my family in Cuba.  Some
In New Jersey.  Otros aqui.
I fought con Castro in the Sierra Madres.
I fought contra Castro in Playa Giron.
I would fight again.  Sí!"
The affluent youth lolling
Next to him says, "Cuba?  Go back?
I was born here, man, in the States.
Whadda I wanna go to that island for?
This is home, damnit!"
"Señor, they don't know,"
El viejo apologizes.
"They know only shiny cars
And good times.  They
Don't know the pain.  We've
Done everything--todo para los niños--
But they don't know Cuba. 
Where they came from.
He squints and sighs at Martí,
Who would understand,
Who would help.

wind creeps in from glades
and bears wet wildness
of seeping swamp

MEDLEY

The bronzed cracker, leaning his bay window
Against his beat pickup, spits
Into the dust, the deflated dust.  "Miami's
Like a roller coaster outta control,"
He says, "Don't know when it's gonna
Stop. Up and down, around 'n' round.
I remember when the city stopped
At the racetrack.  Now it just zooms
Around it.  This ol' street's gonna
lick out into the Everglades
And reach out on an' on.
Lotsa my buddies done
Took off fer quieter places.
But, what the heck, I was born
Here.  My daddy was born here.
Well, I'll stay.  Life's mostly what you
Make it anyway.  My children are grown
And gone.  Can't talk to 'em anymore.
But they still come down once in a while
To visit the city.  It's like
Some dream they can't quite believe."
He shovels his shirttail in and grins
Like he knows a joke
And I missed it.

air settles in like sleep
and mirror clouds seem like my own
dream that I will wake to

October 1985, Revised June 2010


I revised this poem that was first published in City Magic, 1987. 

The preceding map gives you a good picture of where I lived on the bay, just south of the 79th Street Bridge that leads onto the John F. Kennedy Causeway.  When I first moved to South Florida, I lived in Hialeah, so I became familiar with it and Medley.  When I first moved to the bay, I was still working in Hialeah at Westland Mall,  so I traveled up and down 79th Street almost every day (usually by car, but occasionally by metrobus).  I soon realized that I was passing through various ethnic neighborhoods.  On my days off, I often exercised by running over the bridge and down the causeway to Normandy Isles and back, or I would drive to Miami Beach to swim in the ocean and lie on the beach.  I also drove to Miami Beach to do my laundry at a laundromat there: Cohen's Coin Laundry, which I may have chosen just for the pun, alliteration and internal rhyme; but it was also safer than the laundromats along US1, which at that time had its share of hookers, muggers and drug dealers.