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Hispanic

POETRY

CAPTAIN TILLY PARK, QUEENS, SEPTEMBER 2001

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.9K views

‘The park is named for Captain George H. Tilly, a local son of a prominent family who was killed in action in the Philippines while serving in the Spanish-American War, and a monument to the war is prominent in the park.’ New York City Department of Parks & Recreation.

 

From the park’s Memorial Hill one can see

Manhattan, and the World Trade Center’s

Twin Towers. Below, this Labor Day

early evening, the benches round Goose Pond

are filled with families – Sikh, Jamaican,

Hispanic. Annually this season

the water is the colour of  jade –

insecticide to kill mosquitoes.

 

George Tilly was killed by Filipino

freedom fighters. His family owned the land

the park is built on. They used the acres

for flocks of ducks and geese – when Empire City,

seen from rural Queens, was like somewhere

in the clouds. The air, this gentle evening,

is filled with music and barbecues.

 

 

 

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POETRY

ROME

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.7K views

At the crossing of Madison Avenue
and 42nd Street, you can see, east
and west, the Hudson. On Brooklyn Bridge,
three Hispanic girls sell mineral water.
An Asian man sleeps on the A Train between
Washington Square and Columbus Circle.
Down Fifth Avenue, from Central Park East
to St Patrick’s, the black top is obscured
by constant yellow cabs. From the Empire State
the land stretches for days and days. All roads
lead here – to the template of the gridiron
cities of this imperial republic.
Who would not, in the known world, have some
notion of this Rome? It is the power
that enhances, corrupts. Its ruins are
unimaginable.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

CARDINALS AND GIANTS

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read1.8K views

As the First Gulf War began, I watched
the Cardinals – in their brewery
sponsored stadium in downtown St Louis –
beat the ‘Frisco Giants. The home team
is named for the scarlet-breasted bird –
the visitors (aka the New York
Gothams before they went west) for chutzpah.
The fixture was part of the USA’s
annual baseball World Series, which,
of course, includes no teams from abroad.

It was a weekday, early evening –
very much a family occasion.
The programme, advertising caps and tee-shirts,
urged us to ‘think of our boys in the Gulf.’
Most of the players had Hispanic names.
In the intervals, the black vendors
climbed the terraced steps. ‘Any of you farmers
want a coke?’ they called and the mostly white
crowd took no offence Missouri being
a state of farms – soya beans and hogs.
Meanwhile, the quadrille of baseball resumed,
its restrained drama accompanied by the theme
from Jaws each time a player made a home run.

As twilight became night, I remembered
the wide river a couple of blocks away –
rising in the hills of Minnesota
and debouching, two thousand miles
and more, through the shining, shifting Delta
into an altogether different gulf –
and I thought of the immense Republic’s
dark, inviolate fields.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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