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Another Troy
When the Green Island Bridge, a scowling trigonometry of over- wrought iron from the 1800s, veed into the river, we danced all night at a tri-city block party, giving thanks that none were hurt, and at dawn we printed tee-shirts, petitioning that the wreckage be preserved. We loved a ruin. After dyeing our roots with toothbrushes from Tek Hughes on giddy high school Fridays, my friends and I sauntered in electroplated glory by the river. Like water lilies wan and local, species Trojan, condoms bobbed above the current after Happy Hours. What would The Hudson River School have done with this? "Troylets,"? so the college students called us, Trojans being too noble for makers of Rototillers and shirts. I, too, felt embarrassed by Troy's futile boosterism: the schemes to sell itself as "City of Friendly Service," or "Home of Uncle Sam" were failures of imagination. In the seismic hiss of the Volcano Restaurant I invented Armageddons guaranteed to free us: fires coasting down from heaven, spumes of air pollutants hurled into the stratosphere and we, the damnificados, fleeing. An erupting Italian restaurant- that would put us on the map! Evacuated to faraway gyms, we'd picture the cinders, an eiderdown drawn over dinettes and reproductions of The Last Supper in our scruffy, buckled homes. As when the bridge fell, no one would be scratched. But Troy's rough edges would be buffed by the crumbled palladium of ash. A local poet liked this plot and used it in a sonnet. I starred as Signorita Mount Saint Helens, an Irish-American flamenco dancer burning up the backstage of his heart. But when I climbed on podiums to scream in praise of rebels torching "draft cards, bras, and ghettos," the poet refused to speak to me. If asked I could have told him that being typecast as the Muse makes arsonists of women who aren't fools. In time, I escaped the ruinous romances, but Troy remains. Today the eccentricity of its willful brick begins to look like character. Oh, if I sing of icicles dangling like syringes from friezes "neo-grec" or French, of roses battened down with sackcloth, trees lumbagoed under lumpen winters, I'm minting an insignia. Take this, "Troy- the City without Glibness," for your spartan tribute.