Jewel of India

From the dim hallway, walls swollen with summer damp.

Concave threshold to the morning’s livid light.

When my father said Gerrard Street East, his voice.

The passing subway tremors upwards, into me, reverberates in ligaments and membranes.

On canvas shoes through minor parks, a pinball in a rudderless machine.

My father, transiently animate. Funny in the ebbing language, bantering with shopkeepers.

A lifeguard pours bleach in the fractured blue wading pool, sloshes it out with her legs.

If I could, I’d view a produce stand as he did, fill a paper bag with dillweed, bitter melon, l