One poem by Ian C Smith

Hester Street

Jetlag jaded, we emerge from our bolthole,

our first destination the Lower East Side,

New Zealand, Tahiti, Pacific atolls,

memory-blurs like Las Vegas’ moon-bright neon

seen from the dirty, half-empty plane,

anything better than the moral past.

From jealousy to the land of movies.

Our employers, Camp America, don’t show,

so we pilgrims venture from Newark airport.

Our backpacks, bus and subway stares,

abrade my scarred self-consciousness.

With this woman, so young, her beautiful hair,

my unedited heart pulses for all to see.

On the train, newspapers in four languages.

I wanted to share an arthouse cinema

so had taken her to see an old movie

about embattled people making fresh starts,

a dream I shall never quite realise.

Still cringing from the hounds of disapproval

we discover the movie’s locale

as if entering a teeming street masquerade.

Information seekers, we attract curiosity.

Feeling like extras in our own movie

imitating another customer’s lunch order,

our accents hush a noisy, crowded deli

like a poised knife-trick artist in a circus.

Eating under the ornate street sign

I can’t, don’t want to, believe we shall fail.  

(A note on the poem: When I remarried, to a much younger woman from a different background, we encountered hostility from both families so temporarily fled to America where everything seemed like a movie.  Many years and four tall sons later we are still together. ‘Hester Street’ was the arthouse movie’s title.)

Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in Axon: Creative Explorations, The Best Australian Poetry, London Grip, Poetry Salzburg Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, The Weekend Australian & Westerly. His latest book is Here Where I Work, Ginninderra Press (Adelaide).  He lives in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, Australia.