Martin Altman
Four Poems
The Escape
The window is painted black,
The sun does not exist,
The sea meets sky within.
“Caw, caw,” birds circle,
A thud…one has fallen.
The room is small and cluttered,
they permit no mirror,
“Oh, my God,” I would have exclaimed.
I eat, sleep, and defecate here.
The hard metal bed sends a chill through my groin,
the air is damp with the smell of urine;
A pipe bursts in the middle of the night,
The water glows from chemical additives.
Like a roach through the smallest crack I crawl.
All my things were taken from me,
when I walked through the gate: clothes, my hair, pen and paper,
the loving look of my wife and children,
the right to live till nature decides, and
to sit in my own darkness, a reading light,
All things by which we make our image.
What’s left, after we’re stripped of our nakedness?
A light in a hollow space
lingering over memories.
Norfolk & Central, Newark, NJ
We were coming back from church,
It was a sweat-box that summer day,
I swear I saw beads of sweat on Mary’s breasts,
(I mean the Virgin, the statue).
We jumped into the car, no A/C, windows wide open,
“Ice cream, ice cream,” I yelled, and Dad under his breath,
“One more damn thing to do,” but In a loud voice, “Great idea!”
Dad’s saint, St. Joseph, provider and protector of the family,
Was led down the garden path by the Spirit
To raise His child not his own,
To marry her who would not consummate their marriage, and
He hung in the middle of a rosary from our rear-view mirror.
At the red light,
This man, reeking from alcohol,
Stumbled out of Irving’s Package Store,
Took a long gulp from a pint of Thunderbird,
Smashed it on the ground,
Grabbed my father’s tie through the open car window,
Dragged him out, slammed him against the hood,
Held a knife against my father’s crotch,
“Your wallet or your nuts,” but to himself, “God help me.”
Dad stammered, “Wallet…in car…Elise…the money.”
As she took the money out, the man saw the badge and freaked,
“A cop, a cop…I got a cop by the neck and balls.”
Suddenly, “Can’t breathe, can’t breathe,” said the man,
Asthma laid a hand on him, not Dad.
Years later smoking would take Dad’s life.
Lucky Strikes, his brand,
The pack in his shirt pocket,
Made a red bull’s-eye above his heart,
The man was tempted by the target.
Dad: “Hey...listen...listen to me…Your kids...your mom and dad...”
Man: “I’m dead to them. I’m nothin to nobody.”
Dad: “You’re not nothin to me.”
Man: “Sure, I might be your killer.”
A funny nervous laugh exploded from the man’s mouth.
He reconsidered: “Killer? I can barely lift a bottle.”
Choking, he said, “My chest is gonna explode. I can’t feel my tongue.”
Dad took a shallow breath
And handed him his inhaler.
The Anatomy of Authority
God’s penis is power
So a man with a night-stick
Protects and projects
As he rides on the subway.
Apparitions appoint us to positions of power
Over men who poison
Our daughters and sons:
As a kid I read stories about slaying the monster,
And now I stalk stalkers,
Not knowing their names:
Shadows chase shadows into the crowd,
Shadows seek shadows,
And I am among them,
They fade in the darkness or burn in the sun.
My knuckles turned white
As I squeezed the stick tightly;
Then this young girl nearby,
Blonde like my daughter,
Touched my hand as she whispered,
“God’s breast is mercy, drink Her milk, if you dare.”
Then I unclenched the stick,
Took a deep breath,
And walked into the crowd.
Why You Will Never Know What Anything Means
He said,
I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,
I can’t, I can’t,
I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,
I can’t, I can’t, I can’t breathe,
gasping, grasping all the hot air around him.
Two weeks before I gave him a warning,
and before that and before that,
but a policeman will not be made a fool of.
Before I continue...
My hands aren’t clean: I filed a report
he had ten thousand loosies,
to put a patina on something...terrible – but less than a hundred were on him.
So how can you trust anything I say;
I woke up that night and thought it was day.
The idea an eye-sore removed from the street
would make the street better… that was “broken windows,”
that was my calling. So we’re told this guy
was hawking on Bay Street.
Quite simply he was a breaker of windows, and
our job was to sweep up the glass, and take out the trash.
He’s a whale in the Harbor.
Are we the tug boat pulling him out to sea?
Or the whaler about to harpoon him?
“Please don’t arrest me,” he pleaded,
I thought, “Don’t let him slip through the net.”
Blood-choke became air-choke, perhaps accidentally,
My partner brought him down to the ground.
I received his words through a blue veil:
When he said: I can’t, I heard him say: I can, but I’m saying I can’t
so you’ll cut me loose.
A beached whale,
a breeze too faint to feel.
There are parts of the Harbor where
no fish are living, and
many such streets.
I suppose Bay Street is one.
Martin Altman was born and raised in The Bronx, graduated from Lehman College with a B.A. in English, and worked in NYC’s Garment District for 40 years. He lives in Chicago with his wife Joyce. He was Featured Reader at The Café and at TallGrass Writers Guild in Chicago. He has been published in Outrider Press, Red Ochre, Blue Minaret, Adelaide, Aethlon Sport Journal, Light Photography Journal, Penwood Review, The Passage Between, and Off the Rocks. A a stutterer from childhood, a major concern of his poetry is speaking and hearing, breathing and cessation, connection and isolation, and silence.