DIASPORA I am riding the F train to Brooklyn with my son, who is Appalachian as much as anything, who is six and does not notice the Hasidic women reading Tehilim on their way home, praying psalms from worn leather- bound siddurim, moving their lips past Broadway, Second Avenue, Delancey, and he would not know to identify them by their below- the-knee skirts, the filled in parts on their sheitels where scalp should be visible, or the Brighton Beach men in grey fedoras with threatening hand- tattoos speaking Russian, the occasional wondrous mosaic murals or regular green and white tiles spelling station names: Bergen St., Carroll St., Smith 9th St., my son discovering he can see his own reflection in the windows of the cars when they plunge into dark tunnels while the women's lips keep moving, and I want to tell him I know their kind, though I know to say this is reductive or offensive, even if I might say it too about the bleach blond with the septum ring, or the old Russian mobsters, so when he says, It's hard to believe that you got off here every day, I agree and think of all the times I climbed the station stairs or felt the give of metal turnstiles on my hips, the jangle of apartment keys or click of my own heels on pavement after a night out too late, the car service guys playing dominoes on overturned crates outside the bodega who didn't look up, and the way the trains still vibrate beneath the surface with exactly the same frequency they always did, blowing hot air through the grates, rattling me to the bone with foreboding joy and I want to tell him I know this exact moment, the one where you finally learn the contours of your own face, its beauty as it hurtles through darkness. NO MATTER HOW MANY SKIES HAVE FALLEN Let's say we are making a list and it's not about how to be good or zombie foreclosures or anything resembling distress calls from an airline going down in a cluster of trees. Someone says, I've got a situation here, but they don't mean that holiday picture of you dangling handcuffs from your index finger or the fact that your mother loved you very much until we enhanced the audio. Let's say we are in violation of the local housing code, which specifies the number of outlets per room where we can plug in to the network, which says Join Other Network or Airport: On. The overhead compartments groan under the weight of our collective sadness and in the emergency exit row we must speak English, confirm with a loud yes that we're willing to perform certain duties. We agree to rescue each other and strangers who also glance sideways at street grids from above during takeoff, chew gum while we rise past what- ever their threshold for fear or adventure. We are under the care of each other and sometimes we fail mightily to contain the damage: the house, picked clean by scavengers, the hanging gutters, collapsed garage. I'LL REMEMBER YOU AS YOU WERE, NOT AS WHAT YOU'LL BE If you are fearful, America, I can tell you I am too. I worry about my body--the way, lately, it marches itself over curbs and barriers, lingers in the streets as a form of resistance. The streets belong to no one and everyone and are a guide for motion, but we are so numerous there is no pavement left on which to release our bodies, like a river spilling over a dam, so instead my body thrums next to yours in place. When we stop traffic or hold hands to form a human chain, we become a neon OPEN sign singing into the night miles from home when the only home left is memory, your body, my body, our scars, the dark punctuated with the dying light of stars. Excerpted from Holy Moly Carry Me by Erika Meitner All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
