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.