Falling for Xanadu

Preface

A seventeen-year-old novice 

wakes in Irving’s Gotham

thinking of poetry and a home. 


Nurtured by your motherly ways–

unlearning, relearning– I learned 

how to walk amongst them all. Your August sun

wrapped around my abandoned child.

I first saw you with naive eyes.

A dainty skyline full of promise. I longed

for a yellow submarine to take me in,

but it took me under. 

I shed my skin for you:

“Land of simple-minded fools” 

make me new. 

“¡Líbrenos Dios de estas honduras!”

Free me, God, from the black hole 

that is culture cleansing. A citizen of no land

I ought to be. Schooled by privilege, raised to know: 

Mi país cinco estrellas, but the finish line? 

A mine of gold up north.

But, mi tierra, you have given me everything 

And in your sweet crevices,

I failed to rest– now, light fails to project.

Though I'm merely a creation of 

your own duplicity:

Tu hondura es la mia.

On My Building Desire For Silence

Recalling the moment I grew disillusioned

with you still brings the uttermost grief. 

I cannot even begin to understand where 

the asphyxiating air changed from thrill to burden. 

Once, your streets heightened my senses

and rushed endorphins through my body, 

a haze I could only come to recognize as love.

Yet, I wasn’t aware of my building desire

for silence. I tried to find it in you and I did,

occasionally, in the corners of Stuyvesant Square. 

Unraveling my longing for refuge carelessly,

I fell for you. But, my literary mother

taught me early in my penmanship and life that:

one does not ‘live’ at Xanadu.

So I have no choice but to strip myself completely 

from your tenderness and go. 

My trust lies in our hallowed tie.

You once saved me from this suffering 

and you will do it again. 

Once my rebellion destroys you 

and I mend us with well-traveled hands. 

East and West

I wonder if I’ll ever be able to have what I like

or if my tastes are too various 

to be sustained by one of anything.

I was in love with the city, 

the way you love the first person who ever 

touches you. 

But, we forget

all too soon the things we thought

we could never forget.

I am trapped 

in this particular irrelevancy 

never more apparent to me 

than when I am home. 

I had come out of the West 

and reached the mirage. 

New York has a kind of

push, you never have time to think.

It’s one of its charms.

Six months can become eight years

With the deceptive ease 

of a film dissolve. 

People with brains went to New York, 

it takes a certain kind of innocence 

to like L.A., anyway.

I’ve been in love with people 

and ideas in several cities, and

I knew that it would cost me something–

Sooner or later– because I did not belong there, 

I didn’t come from there.

In California 

i found myself staring at the blue

of a cold malibu morning, thinking 

of my two mothers.

there’s a peace here,

one i’ve never known. i now understand

what Eve defended most: a home 

not glorified, raw authenticity. 

her california reminds me of my home and

the earthly desire, to tie yourself to 

its roots. an almost paternal duty

to keep it safe, to keep it true.

though like Joan, i failed 

to sit still. searching for some

faceless muse, moving east.

i am looking down, moving around

a sea of lifeless bodies, looking up, only to find

concrete dullness. the idiosyncrasies

once praised, now nothing more than satire 

of a life we failed to settle with. 

now I endure, 

new york isolation,

california hedonism, 

and lay between

these two, and my home

below

trying to fill the insatiable hole

of my never-ending longing. one who 

has alienated me from ever feeling warm 

under the sun of beachwood drive,

or feel excitement staring at the brooklyn bridge.

and worst of all feeling satiated, in my honduras, in

new york, in california–

anywhere.

On My Sheltered Existence 

New York and I have a complex relationship

Trying to understand it, is merely an insult to our

Sacred bond. Oh, sweet purgatory. 

  •

There is pleasure in seeing everyone

Try and pretend like this life is natural,

As if we are all not fighting to stay awake in the midst

Of a hypercharged overpopulated town

And praying to every god, hoping at least one of 

Them grants us sleep.

  •

Making it: synonymous with 

Survival of the fittest. Climbing your way

Up: tearing yourself apart, limb for limb. Home:

A shoe-box-sized illusion. Happiness: a fools

Only hope, a reason to be. 

  •

There is something about this place,

An ability to either welcome you or

Send you into exile. I walked the Highline

A cold evening in November– searching for the hands 

That once took me in and the peace loaned to me

By Central Park the first time I decided to get out

Of Greenwich Village and up 60th St– questions attack 

Me as I drift, ghostlike, with no direction. But New York is honest.

It never presented itself as an answer. In this way,

The city takes me in once more. Arms reach out 

The reservoir, holding onto me as we mirror each other. 

  •

The hate I feel for this city–

A feeling so strong– It transforms. 

Suffering here feels right. 

NOTES

“Preface” (p.1) The quote “Land of simple-minded fools” is a reference to Washington Irving’s nickname for New York City “Gotham” in the literary magazine Salmagundi in 1807.

“On My Building Desire for Silence” (p.4) The quote “one does not “live” at Xanadu” is borrowed from Joan Didion’s novel Slouching Towards Bethlehem. 

** “East and West” is comprised entirely of lines borrowed from Eve Babitz and Joan Didion. 

Anterior
Anterior

a feather drifting in passing

Siguiente
Siguiente

Ode to Blind Spot by Teju Cole