Marianne Szlyk

His Dreams of Chinatown

-- after a Boston Globe article by Kate Selig

Each September he thought about starting over,

finding a room on Wang Street above the cafes

and travel agencies, the open-air markets

and billiard halls, the one bookstore

run by Christian Scientists.

He wouldn’t mind a small room, even

one with a shared bathroom.  He imagined

learning Chinese, first a word here and there,

something he’d have to repeat to say right.

He'd test his neighbors’ patience.

He'd haul his box of books and few clothes

up four flights of stairs.  Wait.  He’d give away

some books to friends from his neighborhood

of large houses and trees with signs in English.

With his books, he wouldn’t miss the trees.

He'd sleep little, rise early, go to bed late,

not let the street sounds, the buses from New York,

or shuddering trucks bother him.  

He’d eat little, buy his rice from the corner market,

not mind that the grains were white.

One summer he read about the woman on Wang Street.

She carried the bucket of ice up four flights of stairs,

soaked her thin blanket in melting ice, then hung

the cloth in her one window to catch the breeze

from hot asphalt, deep-fryers, the absence of trees.

Perhaps when he was younger he could have lived

the life he dreamed about in apartments shared

with English-speakers who drank lite beer, 

watched Fox, let fruits and vegetables rot.

Closer to the age of the woman on Wang Street,

he could not live the life he dreamed of.

Even if he knew he could sleep through

the trucks’ shudder, could study

the Tao te Ching each morning, even

learn a phrase or two of Chinese.

He knew that, like her, he could die there.

 

On the Heat Island

-- after a Boston Globe article by Kate Selig

At last it was September, month of blue skies

without harsh sun, cool breezes on nights

that fell sooner.  One could smell ocean.

For the old woman on Wang Street, it was

a light month, no buckets of ice

in her tiny grasp. No watermelon

in her totebag that she carried up five flights

to her room whose walls closed in on her

each summer. No thin blanket

dripping with water, hung from her one window

to cool down the breeze that came in from

hot asphalt, hotter buildings, the absence of trees.

September was a light month when her room

felt larger, when she did not stop 

on the second floor landing, when even

the air felt lighter.  She could smell the salt 

from the ocean she’d never seen.

 

Sunday Nights with Dr. Demento

Because we were too young to listen to

the Rock of Boston in its free-form prime.

Because my brother hated the records

I bought for a dollar in Harvard Square.

Because he didn’t want to listen to

punk rock like my high school friends did.

Because it was Sunday and we could not

play rock music on our radios.

My brother and I sat up Sunday nights

to listen to Dr. Demento’s show.

These songs my father could have listened to

through crystal radios he built from kits.

These songs conjured his parents’ narrow streets, 

the accents, the klaxon, the streetcar’s rush

to summer Saturdays’ bustling downtown,

everyone dressed up despite feeble heat.

Benny Bell’s “Shaving Cream” finished.  Next came

a song by Spike Jones.  Then high-pitched kids sang

about the molicepan and the biddle lum

on the sterbcone chewing some gubber rum,

one of the poems our grandma recited.

This song she could have sung in the parlor

by the piano on the second floor

but not on Sunday, a day for church hymns.

 

We heard Weird Al add his accordion,

his lyrics to a Monday morning song,

one I had to listen to at work

at the mall where girls in shorts ambled, safe

from the heat, safe from cars, safe from the men

who drank in the shade of the closed-up stores.