Nobody walks on the water to get to Bklyn,
but they act that way
coming across the East River as though it
were an ocean, coming from Manhattan expecting
a different language
talking of the trip from East B’way to York St. as if they had
just finished a journey on the Siberian railroad
once out of Moscow everything was better
Nobody needs to be born again to reach Hoyt St. and
Schermerhorn
but a friend once thumbed his way to Manhattan
from Seattle in winter only to tell me Bklyn was
too far to travel by subway
and a poet who’s lived for years
on a lonely farm in Maine talks
of Park Slope as if they hoist
supplies up to us on a rope
Nobody has to be baptized or circumsized to come to Jay St.
but ask any cabbie on 42nd St. to take you there and
watch the tremble, or look of distant pity while
Off duty signs pop up like firecrackers
I’ve lived in Bklyn for 10 years
And I’m tired of being treated like a foreigner.
I tell you it has to stop.
Nobody has to part the waters to walk on
Atlantic Avenue. Bklyn is a part of New York City.
Stop treating us like we lived in Staten Island.
