Rudy Giuliani says, We are more determined than ever to live our lives in freedom.
That September Next thing I know, I am running east on Liberty Street, nerve endings on fire in my spinal canal. I zigzag past fellow stalks of ash. A ghost walks by, wants directions to my future. Everywhere is loosened chaff; nowhere, the wheat. * Am I dreaming the odd word out— rain, hail, body, snow? I can’t wake enough to get it wrong, would like a second chance to get it wrong, to edit, to un-think a small red shoe is a rosebud blooming on the sidewalk. * A birthday girl spells fun: B-r-o-n-x P-e-t-t-i-n-g Z-o-o, where true love, at eight, means knitting her favorite lamb booties for the snow. In a photograph thumbtacked to a billboard by the Pearly Gates, she’s petting her new friend Cotton Ball. * In Katz’s Delicatessen I find myself staring at flayed bellies of chickens, pastrami navels of cows. I do this while waiting my number to be called. I ask for matzo ball soup to go. At home, in a broth of wet ash and fear, I stir in chicken fat, carrots, her shoe. * Rudy Giuliani says, We are more determined than ever to live our lives in freedom. That is, if you’re an optimistic parakeet. If not, if you’re not okay in your cage or don’t want the cracker you’ve been taught to want, what exactly can this mean?
Mark Rubin
