Twenty-Year New Yorker, After His Exile

by Brett Rutherford

Though I thought I had shed it,
this city has grown on me,
my head-top
soaring amid the
clouds, fingers
outstretched
toward the harbor goddess.

I am all of it —
luster and greed,
poet and dreamer —
landlords unnamed in tinsel-gold
lording it over the Lorca slums —
infant stock brokers
in twin baby prams,
their nanny pushing past
doorways where tattooed
squatter punks rage — the towers
and their polished atriums
clean and classic for an Age of Silver —

cameras watch everything, as bulky men
in blue uniforms eye multiples screens
for back-packed likely suspects, yet eyes
avert from the darkened outer avenues
whose concrete canyons smoke
with suppressed resentment.

I can be all and celebrate all,
make my inkwell of the
things you dare not think of:
the crumbling infraworld
of steam pipes that, bursting,
cook office workers like
lobsters, the rivets and spikes
that loosen beneath the wheels
of the subway, the furtive shadow
that gives itself in doorways
to random takers.

This is Atlantis, Babel, Gomorrah and Tyre,
The Temple of Dendur, Tyrannosaur,
Ming, Ch’ing and Tang ceramic
Carnegie Hall, the Opera, the Symphony,
the thunder-thump of 1812 in the Park.
The nights of undulating ecstasy
sparking still in a hundred thousand eyes
in the city that will not sleep
and will not surrender its secret yearnings,
the pagan embrace of gods in underwear
towering over neon flesh amphitheatre,
Times Square unsquaring America
into Dionysian dervish naked dancing.

I am the weed-lot strewn with mattress springs,
the chaste fountains of Lincoln Center,
the pride of the library lions on Fifth Avenue.
Long-legged Athena strides here in the sunlight —
behind her, a meth Medusa beckoning.
Forward or backward? Where will this city go?
Where its inhabitants?
Jack hammers and dynamite
remake my countenance,
revise my profile.
I am always fleeing this city to save my soul.
I am always coming back
to make it anew in marble.

          —

Revised 2026

Arabesques on The Statue of Liberty (2026 Version)

 by Brett Rutherford

1

Bad Dingo rides

the Staten Island ferry dusk till dawn,

clinging to rail,

nestling an all-night tumescence,

hard at the sight of the robed lady,

vast, unapproachable.

He’s stalking her.

He bides his time.

Some night

there’d be a fog,

a power failure.

He’d come up behind her,

he’d prod the small

of her spine

with his imperious knife,

jostle her bronze buttocks

with his ardent flesh-prod.

She’d drop the tablet;

the torch would sputter.

He’d push her off her pedestal.

Bad Dingo would give it to her good

the way he did to other white ladies

in parks and stairwells and subway cars.

This would be the rape of all rapes,

the pinnacle of his career,

the ultimate boast:

“See that goddess

flat on her back in the harbor —

she ain’t so proud now

since someone had her,

made her moan.

Bad Dingo had her,

stuck it to the Statue,

white lady Liberty!”

2

In Chinatown,

Mrs. Wang mounts

a quiet

rebellion

against the ways of the elders.

She has done all

her mother asked her:

married the boy

the matchmaker ordained,

bore sons and daughters

in regular order,

burned joss and incense

at every altar

sent ghost gold and peaches,

phantom cars and televisions,

Hong Kong Hell dollars

to the teeming, greedy dead.

Now her husband travels,

has mistresses, won’t talk

about his gambling.

Her children are gone,

married to foreign devils.

Her round-eyed grandchildren

will not learn Mandarin,

nor will they send joss wealth

to her once she is dead.

A dream-voice told her, "Live,

and make each day

count as a year."

So she becomes a whirlwind,

sells off her jade and porcelain,

cleans out the savings account,

her husband knew nothing about

buys an airline ticket for San Francisco —

and after that, who knows?

She pawns the statuette

of pearly white Kuan-Yin,

the Goddess of Mercy

whose only blessing

was endless childbirth

and wash this, iron-that.

On a whim she buys another

to take its place at her bedside:

a foot-high Statue of Liberty

with batteries and glowing torch.

She leaves it for her husband,

her wedding ring

on its spiky crown.

3

Today two New York titans

switch places.

A grumpy Green Liberty

strides up Fifth Avenue.

She crushes pedestrians

in verdigris splatter.

Her sandaled feet

send buses flying,

kiosks shattering.

Her great head turns

among the office towers. She reaches in,

pulls screaming executives

through razor-edge panes,

undresses them

with her copper fingers,

discards them one by one

to the pavement

twenty stories below.

The man she wants

is not among them. He’s got

to be a real American,

one of those Arrow shirt models,

blond, and a screamer,

a yielding but unwilling male

under her stern metallic nails.

The more he'd cry outPut me down!

the more she would like him.

Uptown, she finds one —

a tousle-headed messenger,

Viking-blond and thin as a rail —

she scoops him up —

his empty bike totters

and is instantly stolen.

Imperious male that he is,

he bellows Put me down!

She cups him in one palm,

drops her tablet,

rolls up her sleeves,

and starts the painful ascent

of the Empire State Building.

Up there, they would be alone together.

She'd show him the top of the world.

Downtown

on Liberty Island,

a great ape replaces

the green goddess.

King Kong wields a torch,

incinerates all passing freighters,

inspects all passenger ships

to toss away all

who do not meet his standards.

He hurls great boulders skyward,

warns off incoming airplanes

with a shake of his might fists.

Homeland Security Kong,

appointed by the President himself,

he guards the harbor now.

He is a real American

and he shouts his slogans:

America First! Stay out!

Go home!

No foreigners allowed!

    — c. 1987, revised 2026

Underfoot

by Brett Rutherford

If, on a New York sidewalk, you
walk amiss, the foot first feels it —
some gelid and formless object
that will take hours to remove
from the shoe-sole’s nicks and crannies.
One rapid inhalation tells
if it be horse or dog in scent —
but no! obnoxious, odorous,
it is a Trump I trod upon.

Despised

by Brett Rutherford

I sit,
a solitary diner
in a Chelsea Chinese
restaurant.

The loud-
mouthed manager
kitchen-bellows
to anyone who hears:

“Two men come in together,
no service for them.
I know what they’re up to,
don’t want their kind in here.
Who wants to touch a plate
they’ve eaten from?
I have to wear gloves
just to use the subway.”

I eat no more. I pay;
I leave no tip.
If I spoke up, I’d only learn
how much kung fu they know,
or how adept they are
with those heavy-handled
cleavers. Some day
my withering contempt
will find its way to the page.

Outside, it is dusk.
The after-rain light
makes everyone I pass
especially handsome.

Passing, I smile at one.
He saw me coming.
His eyes bulge out.
The spit he’d saved
for the last three blocks
in need of a target,
flies out toward me.

No one is safe
in this plague-feared city.

The Men on Central Park West, 1969

by Brett Rutherford

Perhaps I look too wild,
too out of the woods,
too much a hippie for them,
the men who every night
fill nearly every bench
on Central Park West.

Walk if you dare, from
Seventy-Second to Eightieth,
Dakota to the Museum,
as hundreds of eyes size
you up and down, and one,

if you are lucky, will nod.
The place is an open secret.
No business strolling there
except for “friends of Dorothy.”

Doormen across
the street ignore us,
while dowagers frown
from the upper windows.

Sometimes, from the Dakota’s
luxury tower,
a grand piano rills
and thunders over us.
Horowitz? Rubinstein?
Who knows? Our strolls
encompass much city lore,
from Rosemary’s Baby’s nursery
to the museum’s dinosaurs.

Once you’ve been seen
and gain a nodding
acquaintance with regulars,
they soon enough confide
what places are safe, or not,
and whom to trust, or not.

Some, eager to please,
go home with almost anyone.
Others, behind
some imaginary monocle,
look down in scorn on all
who are not Apollos, perfect
in form and fashion.

As midnight approaches,
the police sweep by.
The loungers vanish
like bats and crickets.
Trees hum with conspiracy.
Something goes on
amid the bushes,
but I am not sure what.

One of the last,
as he takes up his umbrella,
confides to me:
“We bother no one;
they leave us alone.
You might meet anyone here,
bankers and diplomats,
actors, composers, and poets,
the upper crust on down
to the lowest of the low.
Stonewall may have happened,
but not to us.”

 

At Lincoln Center

by Brett Rutherford

As if she knew it,
lost it and found
it again after
oh how many wars,
so many
obituaries read,

she, a bent old
squint-faced in
recognition
pink-coat woman
leaned dangerously,
picked up
with hand nearly as brittle,
the first brown leaf.

"Got you!"
she seemed to say.
She tucked it away
into her wrinkled
Macy's bag, then

giving the slant sun
a tsk-tsk, she
vanished before
I could blink to be sure
I had really seen her,
bag lady, hag
of the fountain,
nixie
of Lincoln Center's
high notes, horn-calls
and pas de deux.

Book Row

by Brett Rutherford

London had its
Duck Lane, where
witch trial tomes
and bound-up
sermons rotted
unread, amid
the novels of the day.

New York once had
"Book Row" which ran
down Bowery way
from Union Square
to Astor, mostly on
Fourth Avenue. Bums

in the doorways, dust
everywhere, piles
of books on carts,
sidewalks clogged
with the unsold —

Three dozen shops
catered to the
improvident collector,
the impoverished scholar.
On a bad day
you came out sneezing,
found nothing,

On a good day
the unexpected treasure
that would change your life
emerged from behind
some other title, tucked
and forgotten, its price

a pittance. Better
than venery and its venison
outcome was biblio
mania and the small cry
of surprise, the fear
that the clerk would recognize
your steal and up-price it,

the moment you came
into the light again,
that volume clasped tight,
as though you had robbed
a bank, or jousted a knight
to win the book of spells.

O, the things we found
and carried off, those
rainy Saturdays
when Book Row called!

At Tower Records

Photo from Wikimedia

by Brett Rutherford

 It was one of those years
when Manhattan shone
not white with diamonds
but lurid crimson, Masque
of the Red Death, tombs
filling as fast as luxury
apartments. A year

 of averted gazes when
a particular face flashed
eyes you thought you knew
but that deathly pallor,
sunken cheeks, unsteady
gait made you look away,

 that year you read
obituaries first, that year
you could not count
on two hands the friends
you lost. One Sunday,

 lost in my thoughts
at the cutout record bins
of Tower Records
(the classical annex of course),
in quest of Handel operas
no one had sung since
Handel’s own day, or some
obscure Russian symphonist

 I saw a man whom no one saw,
or everyone pretended not
to see. Rail-thin in shabby clothes,
torn sneakers, he hurried
from bin to bin, all bent
on the big boxes: Wagner’s Ring
(Furtwangler and Solti, no less),
one each of all the Verdi greats,
a heap of Sutherland and Sills
in all the bel canto must-haves.

 The albums piled
up to his chin, he tottered,
shambled, and pulled himself
to the counter. A few in line
gave way; others behind
pulled back at the sight
of the tell-tale lesions
upon his neck and arms.

 He paid cash. It was all
he could do to carry
the heap of albums away.
No one spoke. Eyes turned
so as not to watch
as he passed the store’s
long windows, to where
a waiting cab, trunk
open, swallowed up
the opera horde
and its new owner.

 We turned back,
each and all,
to our searches.
I knew too well
what this was about.
He had come into
a little money, his life
insurance cashed in,
most likely, and by god,
he was going to die
owning every damn opera
he had ever wanted.

 He would go out like a diva.

 

Things Done in Cities

by Brett Rutherford

My Hudson-cliff view from Weehawken
does not efface the smear of it,
Manhattan clogged in its own soot,
the river gray-black with sinister flotsam.
The shade of sycamores and elms,
the brace of breeze and lambent sun,
the promise of golden reflections
if we wait for sunset — these things
cannot negate my friend Boria's lament:

"Peaceful from here, a birdflight
removed, a squint of street.
But still, the thought of the prostitutes,
the gaudy porno shops,
the thought of what might touch you
if you walked along Forty-Second Street.
How have we grown so base?"

I need but close my eyes
to remember slick Dimitrios
and his harem of underage
no-names, and how he sold
his brother's son to slavers
under the eyes of the officers.

Where?
On the steps of the Parthenon.
And when?
Just twenty-three times
a hundred years ago.

Weehawken NJ, Oct 2, 1982, rev. 2020

September in Gotham

This is the only poem I have been able to write about 9/11. It is the darkest shadow in my 40-poem Anniversarius cycle.

SEPTEMBER IN GOTHAM

This is New York, and fall

     has caught us unawares.

From Palisade bus I view

     the gap-toothed skyline,

a forest whose tallest trees

     are suddenly missing.

In Gotham, they say,

strange breezes from the south

make certain elders remember

downwind from the death camps.

There is talk of stolen watches

from shops beneath the rubble,

the discovery daily

     of severed limbs.

Month’s end, I walk all day

     in midtown,

with shoppers determined

to do something normal,

eat Szechuan lunch, browse

books, consider new software.

Like many others around me,

I pick things up from the counter,

     then put them back —

everyday urges seem so trivial.

There is not one note of music.

People keep stopping

     to stare nervously

     at the Empire State,

     like frightened squirrels

     in the shadow

     of a threatened sequoia.

The sycamores in Bryant Park

beam back the sun,

     an interrupted medley

     of overhanging clouds

     that pause, then part,

     then scud away.

Seedpods of honey locust fall,

curl brown like overdone toast

     on the pavement,

but the delicate leaves remain above,

     still adamant green.

It is not till night,

     till I turn the corner on Lexington

     and spy the dark hunched shell

     of the Gramercy Park Armory,

that I see the leaves of this autumn,

     its feuilles morts,

taped to treetrunks, walls and windows,

     tied to a chain link fence,

     row on row to the end of seeing,

flapping in rainstorm,  tattered, tearing,

soon to be ankle deep in the gutter —

these album-leaves of anguish

burst forth with human colors —

faces brown and pink and salmon,

oak and ash and ebony,

the rainbow of human flesh,

     of eyeflash —

visages still in their conquering twenties,

snapshot in happy moments,

    embracing their brides,

          babies on knees,

license, yearbook, graduation photos,

smiling at beach or barbecue,

ink fading or bleeding now

     in the sky’s abundant tearfall.

In the language we use

for the recovery of wayward pets,

these posters beg the impossible:

IF ANYONE HAS SEEN HER —

     MISSING   —   MISSING

LEFT SHOULDER SCAR —

A DOLPHIN TATTOO —

MISSING     —     MISSING

HAVE YOU SEEN ME?—

MISSING   —   MISSING

PLEASE FIND ME

MISSING  —   MISSING

WORLD TRADE CENTER

—September 30, 2001, New York City