Around the Neighborhood

Need some bread? A Tarot reading? Come shopping with me.

My neighborhood is about a half-hour’s bus ride from the city’s center. Its main avenues are lined by apartment buildings with little storefronts on the ground floor; you don’t have to walk more than a few blocks in any direction to drop off your dry cleaning, pick up a quart of milk, or get your fortune told.

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Psychic Readings by Clarissa

Veiled in shawl fringe and cigarette smoke,
she watches from her stoop or at the open window,
scanning the sidewalk, cold reading the passersby -
calling now and then, "Lady, come in,
I have an important message for you, 
your lover -" she adds for some, "your child -" for others;
knowing which to add is art, or spirit guidance.
No calls to the men, beyond a few bold glances,
boldest of all at the tall priest who stalks past her door
from the church down the street, never meeting her eye;
no surprise, if half what the cards tell about him is true.

Two, maybe three, come inside in a day,
for the cards or the crystal. Three, maybe four,
of her regulars call with old fears or new ones,
hungry for spirit comfort. She listens, waiting
for the Other World to speak. Sometimes it does.

At dusk she turns off the neon sign in her window,
draws the curtain, brews tea, and sits alone
at the table she shares with silent crystals,
silent cards, a silent telephone - no word,
by text or by the spirits, from her daughter,
the dancer, the restless pilgrim, no word
for years now, nothing but silence like a veil
that clings and blinds. And still she listens, waiting
for the Other World to speak, for the phone to ring.

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Dancing at the Grocery Store

The owner's uncle works the register, tall and thin
with thick white hair, an old man's solemn slowness
as he scans each item plumped upon the counter:
a sack of clementines, a loaf of wholegrain bread,
a chocolate bar, some cheese. The clementines resist
the scanner; the old man squints, keys in the product code
tap-tap by careful tap. The shopper, a sneakered woman
past the age of dressing to be seen, draws in a breath
to offer some idea or question, lets it out unspeaking,
sways again instead to the Europop beat that bubbles
from the speakers overhead, the beat her hips
have carried through the tight-coiled maze of aisles
up to the counter. And now, a total; cash is tendered,
groceries bagged, and when the old man puts
the change into her hand, he meets the shopper's eyes
and speaks, all Eastern Europe in his voice,
his phrases slow and solemn as his work:
    "I must tell you.
      There is a ten-dollar charge.
      For unauthorized dancing."
His eyes begin to twinkle; behind her mask
the shoppers face has opened in a grin.
    "Because the dance is good.
      I waive the charge this time."
And now her laugh sings up and down the aisles.
"So generous," she says, and lays a hand over her heart.
"So kind." Then with a wave she dances to the door,
grocery bag swinging, hips still keeping time.

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There probably aren’t quite as many psychic-reading shops in my neighborhood as there are dry cleaners, but it’s close. I rarely need something dry cleaned, and so far I’ve never needed to visit a psychic, but I notice their shops and try to picture what their workday must be like. “Clarissa” is a composite of two such women: the one who urged me from her stoop, years ago, to come inside for an important message, and the entrepreneur who does in fact sport a small neon sign in her window just down the block from a local church. (And considering the stories I’ve heard from non-psychic sources about the priest there, I can only imagine what her cards and crystals have told her about him.) Everything the poem describes of her professional and personal life is purely imaginary, and nobody was more surprised than me when her absent daughter appeared in the last stanza.

If I’m not much of a customer for dry cleaners and psychics, I do a lot to keep the neighborhood’s mom-and-pop grocery stores in business. During the pandemic shutdown, when I didn’t want to take the bus to the supermarket or add to the delivery workers’ burdens, I developed a whole map in my head of which small stores within walking distance were open, and what they stocked. “Dancing at the Grocery Store” is, as they say, based on a true story - very little imagination involved, just the facts … which reveal another surprise.

Which turns out to be a common thread in these two poems: your neighbors are more than you see, or expect to see. A heartache, an unexpected sense of humor … you don’t know what’s in there, until the moment when you catch a glimpse or imagine that you do. Written down in flat prose, that’s a truism; a moment at a time, a neighbor at a time, it can become a connection. And sometimes a poem.