A. E. Weisgerber

Come walk along the Bayonne sky
and pause above the Kill Van Kull.
where hallelujah arching vaults,
o’er asphalt launch their sonic songs,
Doppler Effects, Brian Enoes, 
in curlicue wakes of tug boats.

Our muse assumes the shape of boats,
ambassador of bay and sky,
then, like old man Verrazano 
whose distant towers peep the kull,
her steady hiccup-wheels spin songs
with expansion joints and asphalt.

Power-wedges? cushioned assault?
Nothing much has changed with tug boats.
Their surly, barging strong-armed song
pips under a chip of asphalt sky—
whose girders, cables, arches, cull
an eight-fingered wave from Queneau.

Something about this form, Q knows,
is shabby vintage, like John Galt.
Wooden word pallets, ladders, sculls,
strew the paths of prowling tug boats.
Rivets, bolts, footings, beams, the bridge:
It’s aggressive, this Kill Van Kull song.

At mid-span our muse plumbs new songs,
Naphtha spills? Yes, quite apropos.
The Fresh Kills landfill birds the sky,
and greens the World Trade voids and vaults,
caresses sorrow. Noble boats
lay down their wreaths in Kill van Kull.

Men dredge and score the Kill Van Kull
where cars hurl sonic arrow-songs
of spanners, rivets, martyrs, boats,
and diesel muses let us know
this bridge is loved, loved to a fault:
a prayer aloft in Bayonne’s sky. 

Envoi

I love the sky, says Kill Van Kull.
I love the salt, the sky sing-songs.
Yo! gotta go, shrugs the tug boat.

 

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A.E. WEISGERBER is from Orange, NJ, and has recent prose in Many Loops, 3:AM, Yemassee, SmokeLong, DIAGRAM, Matchbook Lit, Gravel Mag, and The Alaska Star. She is a 2018 Chesapeake Writer, 2017 Frost Place Scholar, 2014 Reynolds Fellow, and Assistant Series Editor for the Wigleaf Top 50. Follow @aeweisgerber or visit neutralspaces.co/aeweisgerber