Hallie Chametzky
On the day the world closed up shop, a pair of Ugg boots on the sidewalk
After “First Do No Harm” by Bob Hicok
turned on their side and stacked one on top of the other
the angle just so,
so that the image comes to mind of their wearer
stopping in her tracks
frozen—maybe suddenly or maybe
a gradual decrescendo, as if stepping into molasses—
and realizing in that moment, standing (for now)
at the corner of 120th and Pleasant,
that rather than give up the now literally sickening sweetness
of cupping her hands underneath those of her bodega man
to accept the change from her late afternoon indulgence,
nestling her rounded index fingers beneath his outstretched ones,
then extending a high-five to his daughter, backpack still on,
in for her late afternoon ritual
of somewhat strangers thrilled to see what she drew at school
(it’s her cat, head too big, matchstick legs, purple fur, perfect cat),
rather than being a person who does not do this
she will simply topple over and cease to be.
A fly lands on the top boot
and I think of a poem hanging on my wall
which I believe is about the souls of bugs and people
and the ways we do them harm.
Now the stuff of our joy shelf
is looking oddly like harm,
like when in line for the grocery store you give the crying kid a lollipop
only to have it snatched away
by the mom who knows his allergies.
Sorry, I was only trying to help.
I was only trying to touch and be touched,
to feel myself the hero of the everyday nuisance.
There were always ways we burned each other with kindness.
Let’s not have this kind of talk here, in this poem, though.
I am building a house, next to it another, soon enough a village.
What is the point of making a home
with all the fear and mistrust of the one you left?
I am hammering the nails into the floorboards of a room
with doors on all four sides
so that I can walk in at the same time as you
and you and you
and we can all meet in the middle
and stand firmly reaching out.
I hope the girl with the boots shows up to the party
I still feel new to the neighborhood, I’d like to be introduced.
Is there any truth in this whole crowded, quiet universe
not arrived at sideways,
squinting, groping in the dark expanse?
Alarming, after colliding with nothing for so long,
to find a miracle on the other side
of your little, hopeful hand.
That something is a village bathed in light,
in the village a house,
in the house a window,
through the window a room,
on the floor a fly,
in the fly’s hand
my own.
—Submitted on
Poems by Hallie Chametzky have appeared in The Underground, Amendment, and Pwatem, as well as in the anthologies America’s Emerging Poets 2018: Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas (Z Publishing House, 2018), Virginia’s Best Emerging Poets (Z Publishing House, 2017), and Writing South Carolina: Selections from the First High School Writing Contest (University of South Carolina Press, 2015). Based in New York City, Chametzky works as a dancer, choreographer, and archivist.
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