Summer, and the city smells
like sweat and trash. The streets
are overrun with immigrants
and tourists - all the locals know
not to go outside.
I'm in Chinatown. The fruit
and vegetables carts run
along the sidewalks
of Canal. Block after block
is a pageantry of shapes and colors -
anything and everything for sale:
Do you need a Lucky Cat? Are you
looking for star fruit? Ancient
herbs to solve your ailment?
But I've come here for one reason -
to find the First Shearith Israel Cemetery,
hidden among the buildings
and busy streets - a pact of land
lost to the average passerby.
I find the burial ground: a few stones stand
chipped and weathered away.
I stare at the worn-down writing
on each marker, the glyphs are foreign to me
in sight and meaning.
Perhaps I am never meant
to understand. My people, their wisdom:
passed on through generations
only to halt here.
The sky turns grey and still,
a storm settles off to the south.
The streets keep moving -
people passing stare at me
but keep moving. Not even time
can keep up to the churn of traffic.
Chatham Square falls beneath shadows:
our bodies slip into silence.
Judson Simmons is a graduate of the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Program, and holds a BA in Writing from the University of Houston. His chapbook, The Hallelujah Hour, will be published by Amsterdam Press later on this year. Judson’s poetry has appeared in Pebble Lake Review, Folio, Evergreen Review and other journals.
| After finishing grad school, I had a brief stint of unemployment. To pass the time I explored New York City; after hearing about the First Shearith Israel Cemetery, I knew I had to visit it. I walked all around Chinatown looking, and soon found this cemetery. Fenced in, I could only see the markers from a distance. |
