Joshua Cohen - Witz

New York, New York again, as it’s said: an invocation…as if a blessing, a benediction, for luck it’s always said twice: once shining in the marquee of the mind, the second instance and final invoked over the grave. Nu York, He says to the driver, nu, York! Man chattan ! once the hometeam town, I’m sure you’ve received the postcards and sent them, hymn, bought the snoglobes and tshirts and magnets and pins — the land of the rottenmost apples, fallen hard from every tree in the world, as the earth tilts away from a season of the sun and all of them roll their oddest wormed ways down to us…the land of the locusteaters, drinking the blood of their neighbors for overpriced brunch, fighting ground of the bears and the bulls, the stage for a waiter acting out The best cheesecake in town …for B, though, it’s been this walking endless walking, hitching walking and hitching again, caravanrigged, this trading up from camelbacked britzkas to landaus, then from pitiable droshkys to piteous drays, a stretch of troika and telga and tarantas, once handsome hansoms, too, and even a saintly because free, nocharge fiacre up from the wilds of Wishniak Hill — and then before that, God and His fiery chariot, think of the time, of the change: there’d been the nation, Him trudging His wander through acres of nowhere, walking jochs and jucharts, these versts of waste, morgens and milyas, halfhorse towns the rear half mostly; stubborn and bucking, now brokenwilled — who knew the United States of Affiliation, if that’s the name nowadays, even stretched out that far, into such contiguous sameness, too long?

Why here? Why, nowhere else. B hitching a hayride at the mouth of the tunnel, He’s offered to pay the toll plus an epes extra for hay — a cart laden with a couple of subsubcontinental emmigrunts, with their dreams hitchedup, hauling in the persons of their innumerable kinder whom they hope to sell as housegoyim or indenture as glaziers’ apprentices, their worldly possessions piled atop and around Him hidden hush under the straw past the cops with their customs and emergency checks: in traffic, stalled amid the whinnying honk of horses, the bleating of goats — they’re stopped in the tunnel’s middle for prayers, extolling ashrey yoshvey — the two of them husband and wife, or husband and sister, or brother and mother, spitting away in indeterminate what language that is, Him thinking He’s always hearing His name, wipes it from His face with a palm. Shalom, good luck, by which they mean mazel, mincha finishesup, they roll forward to drop Him Downtown, wish Him away with much phlegm. Though the streets are empty for the holiday, such is the familiar severe — a formation of metalworked winter; Liberty’s dimmed, His Island’s lost shrouded in weather.

What a day to arrive, B’s thinking, up from Joysey on a life like this: the wind, then the fast, its prayers pouring out a hush from the gusts, Him privated with what, to go without money, without purpose save go, apologize to the gutters and grates. It’s the people, though, they’re the unaskable, the unanswering why — the Other, these others, and nu, fill us in…how can you stay in Joysey living the life of the mind? As the Greeks once said, don’t know if you know: show us a mensch without a city, and we’ll show you what’s either a beast or a God — that’s if the secular isn’t already banned, or otherwise censured. In the name of the Ramjohn, is what Johannine’s calling himself lately, we’re asked the following, what we’ll be asking ourselves for generations to come — what does He have to return to, He doesn’t know anywhere else? How dumb is this? How dumb is this. Hymn. He should have stayed quiet in Joysey and small.

At the Stateline, in the midst of the Holland, verily, the waters are divided — and then, there’s a sign at the exit, a billboard that blinks:

— 12° F

— BLIN — — KING -

COLD ENOUGH FOR YOU?

Landscaped from one of the two mouths of the tunnel, for the many tunnels of this mutated city are monstrous throats that never digest or ever waste what they swallow, without intestine or stomached gargle, how they merely gorge then regurgitate and then gorge themselves again down to the bottom of Broadway — willows groved tightly, their trunks lashed together to prevent them from being uprooted by the tunneling wind, their boughs hung with among many other objects, or forsakings, the harps of the Philharmonic disbanded since last season’s interruption, and then with their strings, all their sections: their violins first and seconds, violas and violoncellos, the occasional weeping, droopy bass, their strings wilting in memory, going loose and de-tuned in the howl coming up from the bay — trees hung not just with bis-biglissandoing harps and with fiddles gutted and bows but with memories, too, and forgettings, pleas and supplications, signs and notes slipped and tied dire: help me find my father , one says, have you seen my partner? another, this posted alongside a photo faced grainy from its constant reproduction, a losingly lined courtroomsketch, if so contact Sassoon & Silver LLP., cash reward for information leading to his recovery, all (succor) wanted, needed, & offered…tins of spam dangling from giftribbons, plastic liters of generic soda, empty jars of mayo weeping ornamentally wrapped from these trees, trays of decorative cupcakes and cookies, novelty balloons; these groves nymphabandoned, lining Canal Street west to the Bowery with equity neckties, daytrader suits on hangers commoditized in plastic fresh from the drycleaners, highheels, dressy pearls’ strands — this the highest rate of return, a reversion to our natural state, a great comfort unconfined: this season, menschs let out their bellies; womenfolk smear their makeup onto the faces of streets, pink and streaks of red like rainbows trailed by snails, then pray for an innerly inclement weather, asking the cloudfall to cool their lusts, to purify their souls; their kinder pitch pennies worthless into the sewer green and gold; dogs once theirs now stray dash lame from snow to snow…skyscrapers once new, abandoned to scaffolds; earthmoving giants idle, dumpster hulks sanctifying as symbols of an emptiness within: ambition unfinished, thrusts unfulfilled; lorded over by an inutile silence and the holy stillness of cranes.

At Union Square, which is called such still, despite — as the most niggling, let’s say perspisacious, of our sages note — its hosting no more unions now broken, busted, and, too, that it’s not, strictly speaking, a square, though in another sense a calling appropriate, and even accurate, a bissel, if only because misrepresentation is what’s expected, what this promised city does best and has always since first it was found, lies to us, misdirects then destroys…B goes and asks a mensch on a bench if he knows the way to the, hymn — Zimmerman’s…if only to say something, anything, just to feel alive and with it, but the mensch turns to Him and answers with some dyspeptic word, not understood, then spits a lip’s worth of angst on His shoes. At Madison despite, He works up the nerve to stop another mensch, this one older, a pensioner and so He thinks more respectful or honest, asks him what he thinks of Mister Israelien, and also, if you don’t mind, as long as I’m keeping you, is his opinion, you know, regarded as popular, but the mensch he just shrugs, keeps his sunglasses down, taps his cane due west. Then up and eastward at the Library, there He says an exploratory, nervous Shalom to a woman who she only blushes, bites her lips — the mouth mortified — the rest of her ignores if flushing still, then skits down the block, turns the corner and bursts into crying…denied, again that feeling that He doesn’t deserve it, not as much this being alive as being alive in a city, in this city with such life, with such change, and how B, He doesn’t belong, feels what’s worse than abused, debased, it’s turned within — unworthy. My people had been right to exurb themselves early — we deserved Joysey, I should never have left.