by Sima Rabinowitz
Encased in plaster. May. June. July. August. September. Immobilized. May. June. July. August. September. And from my windows in this city inside a city: the BX10 and 20, traveling east and west, north and south through Riverdale, Bedford Park, Norwood, Inwood; the BXM 1, 2, and 18, express to the Upper East Side, Upper West Side, and Wall Street (as far as you can go before you fall into the harbor); the 1 train to South Ferry (as far as you can go before you fall into the harbor) above ground until 191st Street and then hurtling forward beneath the traffic; the stubby Rail Link Shuttle lurching in fits and starts to and from the Metro North station; the Hudson Line (Grand Central to Greystone) cruising along the narrow tracks, the Harlem River on one side, Target and Marshalls carved into the bluff—Mount Rushmore of retail—on the other; trucks and vans struggling up the incline that divides Marble Hill from Spuyten Duyvil and then around the curve that separates Manhattan from the Bronx (commercial vehicles are not allowed on the West Side Highway); cars and SUVs the size of small caravans racing east and south up this same route to avoid the toll at Exit 19 and rejoin the Highway where it becomes the Henry Hudson Parkway at Exit 20; cars at ease with E-Z Pass sailing across the Henry Hudson Bridge and disappearing into the (city) trees on the other side; the Amtrak Empire Builder (Penn Station to Albany) plodding steadily under the bridge; NYPD Patrol boats bobbing in the wind where the Harlem and the Hudson converge and flow south to the Atlantic and north to the Adirondacks; the Columbia crew team at dawn, coaches bellowing muffled commands into bullhorns: “Row, row.” I am completely still—May, June, July, August, September—except for the rhythm of my thoughts: Take me with you, take me with you, take me with you.
Sima Rabinowitz lives in the Bronx, New York, where she works as a full-time freelance science and business writer and editor. Her poem “Nuestra Música” appeared in Writers Resist from Running Wild Press.
SLAG GLASS CITY · Volume 5 · September 2019
Header image by Matthew Hurst
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