HELL'S KITCHEN Slices of Life

edited by Mary Clark

HELL'S KITCHEN Slices of Life

The Best Fiction, Prose, and Poetry from the Clinton Chronicle a monthly community newspaper for midtown Manhattan’s west side Hell’s Kitchen/Clinton neighborhood 1992-1998

edited by Mary Clark

Illustrations by Cyn McLean, Philip Levine Forrest Clark and Raúl Manzano

Published by The Public Press New York - Florida

Original Print Edition ISBN#: 0-9611738-0-7 This is a non-profit digital edition made available by The Public Press

© 1999 The Public Press All rights reserved.

Table of Contents Introduction hell's kitchen fables Babylon Blues, by Mary Clark The Broadway Cat, by Forrest S. Clark When Eagles Scream, by Darryl Croxton Deaf Joe, by Mary Clark The Kitchman, by Chris Brandon Minnie and The Crowd, by Mary Clark A Night On The Town, by Forrest S. Clark hell's kitchen pros & cons The Capeman Murders, by George Spiegler The Color of Difference, by Carrie Amestoy 10th avenue, by Clayton Brooks hell's kitchen poetry Hell's Kitchen, by Shannon Mullen Condo Daydream, by Bernie Steinman Zombies, by John Newsome Rainy Night on West 44th, by Forrest S. Clark This Heart, by R. D. Thomas Silent Dancing, by R. D. Thomas On The Pier In Love, by Chocolate Waters The Turquoise Dress, by Chocolate Waters Shoeshine Man Retired, by Chocolate Waters Dreaming On The Wind, by Marc A. Thomas Sunday Promenade on West 43rd Street, by R. St-Pierre On The Fifth Floor, by Jameson Currier Hell's Kitchen, by Jameson Currier An Object, by David P. Duckworth A Glance, by David P. Duckworth the authors the artists

Introduction

Hell's Kitchen . . . more than a neighborhood . . . it's a state of mind. From the slaughterhouses and breweries of the 1800s, the draft riots of 1863, the Fighting 69th of World War I, the home of New York's most dangerous criminals from the early tenement days to Prohibition to the Westies, Hell's Kitchen has risen from the blood and fire of the poor dreaming their riotous dreams and searing the urban landscape with a wild, demanding spirit.

It's not one block, and it is. It's not one place in time and space, because the sum total is greater than what can be seen in a lifetime. For all of us who live here, it's more than a narrative history, but the narrative history is essential to knowing it. The story of Hell's Kitchen can be told in many ways, and must be told in many ways: in poetry and fiction, art and film, biographies and histories.

The Editor

hell's kitchen fables

BABYLON BLUES

Mary Clark

"I know the answer. Do you know the question?" "Go to sleep," said Juan. "Panda, my niña! Come here!" Rafael scooped up the black and white terrier mix. Stretching his legs out on the tangled mass of sheets, he leaned back against the wall. Framed in his window, under a night sky, the stained glass windows of a red brick church across the street glowed from a light within. "I read this book once, about a religion, you know. It sounded like being high. It said there’s a hill, not like other hills, everything’s been burned. All that’s left is black stones and smoke rising and at the bottom, all around the hill, are these vicious white-and-black animals, waiting for you to fall. And the first stone, the book said, the cornerstone of the foundation," Rafael tried to recall, "some people call it Nirvana." Juan stared at the blank ceiling, his large expressive mouth hanging open. He was stoned as usual.

Rafael lay quietly for a moment. "When I was in Korea, they sent us to take this hill. The North Koreans were at the top and they had us pinned down. It went on for hours. They kept sending up flares, lightin’ up the hill, lightin’ us all up. Then my sergeant gets up and starts screaming, Come and get us! Come and get us!" Rafael shook his head in disbelief. "He went down right ‘n’ front of me. I watched him slide past me in the mud, jus’ watched him go by. He looked like a dead dog. I dug down into the mud and hung onto my gun. I must’ve passed out. I woke up the next morning, I was covered with mud. There was blood everywhere, blood turned black, and fire and smoke on the hill. I saw bodies, charred bodies, everywhere I went. That was Korea. Mud ‘n’ rain ‘n’ dead dogs." He went on, like a man thrown overboard and surfacing

to find to his surprise a little pocket of fresh air beneath the overturned boat. "Did I tell you what happen’t to me when I got back from Korea?" "You went home? To Puerto Rico?" "California. We came back to Los Angeles. One of the guys in my company asked me to go to church with him. We drove out to this little town. I went up to the door of the church with him ‘n’ he introduced me to the priest. He went in, but I couldn’t. ’Cause of what I did in Korea." Rafael paused for a moment, running his hand over Panda’s vibrant back. "I saw a lake through the trees, so I decided to walk down to it. I was about halfway there when I saw a cross on the other side of the lake. A white cross at the top of a hill. I didn’t see ’til I got to the lake, one of those little bridges you can walk across, you know," he struggled for air again, "one of those only for people. It wasn’t ’til I got to the other side that I saw a path leading right up to the cross. I was walking up there, and I felt something above me. I looked up.” He glanced at Juan. “Do you know what I saw?" Juan did not answer. "Jesus." "’kay." "Jesus was on the cross and he was alive."

"What’d you mean he wuz alife?" "He was alive and he was looking down at me." Juan nodded, his black curls swarming over the yellowed pillow. Panda jumped off the bed. "What is it?" Rafael felt weak, but crawled over the dozing Juan and looked down. The bed filled the room; there was a strip of floor between it and the door. Beside a small bureau crammed into one corner, a chair rattled around by the door. Panda jumped up and landed on his head. She had thrown up on the floor under the bed, and the putrid smell filled the air. "That spicy chicken Andy gave me," he muttered. “‘Here, this is to feed your dog,’" he mimicked his neighbor. "‘My spii-cee chicken.’" Rafael groaned as his feet hit the floor and he tried to stand. "I can’t eat anything anyway, everything comes up on me." He opened the door. A man was standing in the doorway. Rafael jumped back in alarm. The man grinned, put a finger to his lips, before spreading his hands: Hi, it’s me. "Deaf Joe?"

"Yeah. Remember me?" "I thought you died in jail." "This is your lucky day." Joe was tall and lean with light blonde hair and brown eyes, looking much too dapper in a black suit and white shirt for the broken-down Single Room Occupancy hotel Rafael lived in. He slipped in quick; he was on the run. He bumped into the bureau, steadied himself and was starting to take off his coat when he noticed the large young man sprawled on the bed. "That’s fucked up," he said. Rafael pretended he was the one with the hearing problem. "What stinks?" "An accident," Rafael said, pulling Panda closer. "Sell that dog." Rafael watched Joe take a brown paper bag out of his coat pocket. He held out his hand. Joe gave him the bottle. Thunderbird. They finished it together in silence, passing the bottle back and forth. "Now that’ll have to last to morning," Joe said.

Rafael went out into the hallway, holding Panda in one hand and came back with a handful of toilet paper, cleaned up the mess under the bed. With Panda in the crook of his arm, he crawled across the comatose Juan to his berth by the window. There, all the sights and sounds of the side streets of the night came up to him, and nothing escaped his notice. Hookers strolled, cars lined up, horns played serenades, violins of sirens and radios wailed, a symphony of need and greed. Waiters and actors and bartenders hurried home late. Down the block he heard people singing. Down the street they came. The lovers, the singers, the runners, the robbers. Panda turned over, a shifting pattern of black and white. "Panda Bandit," he said. "What?" Joe barked from the corner. "Panda, because she’s white and black. Bandit, because

she has this mask over her eyes." Joe put his head on his hands, curled into the chair. Rafael heard the singing on the street below, much closer than before, and in the half glare of the street light he was on the hill again, surrounded by clawing animals that leaped and attacked. But this time it was different. He had Panda with him, and they fell back. He began to climb the hill, the wild animals falling away, howling as they plunged into the dark abyss. He was moving higher, as Panda bounded from stone to stone showing him the way. Suddenly, he was filled with joy. He woke up, cold winter sunlight on his face. "I know the answer," he whispered to Panda. "Do you know the question?" Juan was gone and Joe was in the corner combing his hair, adjusting the hearing aid in his right ear. He could sleep anywhere. Rafael had seen him sleep on a chair, a doorstep, a barstool. "Where’s Juan?" he asked. "I kicked him out." Rafael gazed around the room. Juan had taken some of his clothes, his comb and razor. "The bars are open," said Joe. "Let’s get there before

those Irish women drink it all up." "I got to go the clinic." "What?" Joe leaned forward, pressing two fingers against his hearing aid. "The methadone clinic," Rafael explained with a tone of defiance. He envied Joe his freedom to drink, to spend his day free of clinics and other recovering drug addicts. "Then I go to St. Francis of Assisi for breakfast." "Breakfast!" Joe’s face writhed with revulsion. "Man!" he whistled. "Panda!" She came out from under the bed where she had been hiding from Joe and playing with her toys. Rafael carried Panda outside and put her down on the sidewalk. Joe kept looking at the dog and then at Rafael and shaking his head. "One day when you’re out, I’m gonna sell that mutt on the corner." "One day when you’re asleep I’ll cut your throat." "I believe you would," Joe said, and his mouth twitched into a grin. It was in the forties, but still a crust of dirty snow lined the curb. A woman the shape of a cube came out of her building across the street, swathed in a long dingy tan woolen coat,

making her daily trip to the stores on 9th Avenue. Gloria’s brownstone was the finest on the block. She was born in Hell’s Kitchen, remembered how it used to be. Families, she said. No one locked their doors. They passed by Bob outside his thrift shop, a large man going loose in all directions. Bob nodded to Rafael, saw Joe and his face went blank. He folded himself, worn sheepskin coat and baggy corduroy pants, into a lawn chair by the curb to enjoy his morning coffee. Gloria petted the little dog. Joe stood back with an air of disgust. Rafael spotted Anna coming down the street. "Look, Joe, there’s your meal ticket." Joe’s eyes flickered over him. "Keep it up," he said in a half-amused, half-menacing tone. Gloria picked up the whirling dog and handed her to Anna. "How’s 46th Street’s most lovable dog?" Anna asked. "Not you too!" Joe turned on his heel and stalked to the corner. Rafael took Panda’s dog tags in his hand. "Mira," he said to Anna. She looked. The dog tags were Rafael’s Army dog tags. His name and a number. "We were standing on a hill in the rain," Rafael said, "a

long line of men, and at the bottom we could see the fires where they was cooking for us. We fin’lly got there and I asked the sergeant, what is it? Dog stew! he said. Delicious! Mmmm!" Rafael grimaced. "I’d die first, before I’d eat a dog!" Anna knelt down and let Panda go to him. "I left Puerto Rico," he told her, "to serve my country. Started using that shit over there. I never went back home. Don’t want ’em ever to see me like this." Anna joined Deaf Joe and they swept into the corner bar. Rafael stood outside, wondering where Juan was. Juanita, they called him on the street. He surveyed the avenue. Juan-ITA! The question, he thought. No one knows. The answer. He buried his face in Panda’s soft wiry fur. He felt the heat of the charred stones, the smoldering fire of the black hill. He saw the smile on His face. Joe came up behind him, catching him unaware. He felt something touch his hand and opened his eyes to daylight, the tilted avenue, the charging traffic. He looked down at the twenty dollar bill in his hand. "Buy some food for that mutt," Joe said. A month later, Rafael was in the hospital. Then, reappearing, like a wisp of smoke under the old oak tree in

front of the church, he waited for Anna. Joe was away again, arrested. "You seen Juan?" he asked her. No one had seen Juan. He couldn’t keep any food down. Even water came up. He lay in bed, weak, ravaged, his eyes wiped clear of color. Anna tried to keep him clean. He was in and out of hospitals for months. He had a disease that had no name. "I heard Juan’s dead," he told her. "Wasted away. Like me." He dreamed that he was climbing the hill. The brittle coal slag slid away beneath his feet, the darkness was unrelenting. As he climbed, the scorched rocks began to be bathed in a blue glow, reminding him of fading flares over the hill in Korea. He could not see the source of the light. At first the ascent demanded all his strength, but as he moved higher, it became easier to find the way. Finally, it took no effort at all.

This story is dedicated to Rafael de Bellin (“The Shepherd”) and Terrance Joseph (“Deaf Joe”) McMahon, both of whom have passed away. I hope they have found peace in death.

THE BROADWAY CAT

Forrest S. Clark

Ferocious was an adventurous cat even when a sickly kitten. He loved people and was by nature playful, but living in Hell's Kitchen, he had to act tough  and it turned out, acting was in his blood. He earned the name Ferocious and then slowly revealed his true nature to those he loved. Everyone liked Ferocious upon first contact. He was an alley cat and liked to explore. Nevertheless, most of his life he was confined to a West Side apartment where Sally, his owner, did some writing and carried on an in-house business. On very good days the cat was allowed to go up to the roof of the apartment building overlooking Ninth Avenue. Then, one day, Fero, as he was now called, disappeared. Everyone in the neighborhood searched for him, but to no avail. Several days and nights later at a Broadway play quite unexpectedly a cat appeared on the set and ran out of the wings onto the stage at a critical point in the drama. The audience after the initial shock broke into laughter. After that incident the same cat was observed making entrances and exits at a number of Broadway shows. It seemed to prefer certain theaters more than others and

serious drama rather than light comedies. The play-going public became familiar with the cat. In many cases the audience came to expect the cat to appear about the second or third act at a point where the drama on stage was lagging. The cat had perfect timing. The cat entered the theater through the stage door with the other actors, and from a central perch, was seen observing the stagehands preparing the sets, the costumers checking their wardrobes, and the ushers gathering their playbills. Sometimes, at night after the show, he slept in Nicolina's Boutique on a comfortable couch covered with little brown wool teddy bears. One night the news reached Sally and she decided to check this stage-struck cat to see if it could indeed be the long lost Fero. The cat had appeared a number of times at the Martin Beck Theater. Sally decided that if she was ever going to identify the cat she had to attend a play at the theater. She went to the theater, to wait for that magical moment when the cat appeared on stage. She decided to get a seat in the front rows so she could make a positive identification of the mysterious cat that had become the talk of Broadway

by this time. Some Broadway wit named the cat "Miss Sarah" and devoted several columns to its stage appearances. One columnist suggested that the stage feline be given a Cat Award similar to a Tony Award. Drama critics always included a bit about the cat in their reviews. They agreed that the cat had a reputation as a scene-stealer and in a few cases even saved a disastrous play from closing. More than once the cat got a billing on the theater marquee, many times directly following the names of the leading actors. When the night came for the show, Sally got to the theater early, determined to talk to some of the ushers or theater personnel. She found that the cat was surely a favorite among them. One stagehand said, "That cat always takes curtain calls, and once or twice we had to raise the curtain for the cat to make one more appearance to the sound of applause." The play had gone well enough until the second act when Sally noticed there was some commotion on the set before the curtain. The setting was a typical New York street

scene with an alley dominating the stage. There, before the scene began, Sally saw the cat sitting atop a garbage tank at stage right. The cat appeared to be surveying the audience with a haughty manner as if to say, "What do you expect? Cats and alleys go together." The cat remained in position on the lid for the entire scene. As the stage lights came up, Sally got a better look at the cat. Sure enough, it was Fero. "Fero, come home," she was about to whisper from her seat in the second row when she realized the cat had its role to play in the scene. Unbeknown to her the press had picked up the story and was in the theater that night waiting to see if there would be a reunion of cat and human. As soon as the final curtain came down, Sally ran to the stage door to coax Fero back to her. She waited with the press photographers. Finally, Fero appeared, ran out the door and leaped into her waiting arms. The photographers had their photo opportunity. It made a great front page story in the tabloids the next day and even got a few paragraphs in the New York Times. One tabloid carried the headline, "Miss Sarah Comes

Home. Concluding A Triumphant Season." Another read, "From Alleyways to Broadway." Fero's acting career is over, but on dark nights not long after final curtain calls a cat is often seen prowling Shubert Alley, mixing with the late night theater crowds.

WHEN EAGLES SCREAM AND ROSES BLEED

Darryl Croxton

Since you have insisted, I will go on. She was born over seventy years ago in Budapest of Jewish parents devoutly named  Ruth and Jeremiah. She came to this country at age three and grew up in Brighton Beach. It was not an easy childhood. Poverty. Her parents refused to learn English. Her father sold fruits and vegetables and one Autumn day died while consuming an Anjou pear soaked in Polish vodka. Her mother did laundry, windows, toilets, and floors and quietly turned tricks in the early morning hours. She had no brothers or sisters. No grandparents. No relatives. But she had a dream. A dream not even she believed could become reality. Death knocked on every door in those far gone days, the late 1920s. "What is this Jazz Age? I hear no music." She only loved Caruso, Galli-Curci, Martinelli, Ponselle. She thwarted pain with music. She lived in the alleyway near the stage door of the Old Metropolitan Opera House at 38th Street. She never learned a note of music. But she could

sing! At ten, she was raped by a woman and a man. She said, many years later, that she enjoyed every moment of it. It was gentle. It was a strange and majestic passage into adulthood. She had her first drink at age twelve . . . a cold Irish brew from Mr. Paddy's House of Erin on Ninth Avenue. It was there that she met Ezra, the son of a dog who eventually became her husband. Even in her later years she could seduce you . . . with wine, great conversation, dinner, and a wicked tongue. He loved her for just those reasons. You don't meet women like Hester every day. They remain rare music. I fell in love with her when I was twenty two. She was sitting on a worn barstool in a dive deep down in Chelsea. God, she was gorgeous. By then she was married and the mother of three sons  Isaiah, Nathaniel and Daniel. I never met the boys. I heard they were well raised. Ezra had a Black girl up in the Bronx . . . some young thing named Estelle. She gave him a child . . . a girl, I heard. That affair was never discussed. It was a fact, a given, a need. As long as there was bread on Hester's table and the three sons were fed . . . well, who gave a damn? I never touched Hester. We slept together in our

separate dreams. You know, when you walk directly into a stiff wind, you can keep true to the dreams of your youth. She was my sister, my lover, my mother and my friend. She lived right here on West 45th Street in a cold water third floor walkup. Alone and proud when all of the old crowd had gone to see God. Do I miss her? Surely, you jest, you fool! That smile, that piercing laughter, that winking, blinking eye of wisdom? Who but a real fool would dare forget an angel? Hester. Where are you? My eyes may be growing dim this sudden Winter night. Tell me, if you dare, what it is like out there with the sun. If the eagles scream and roses bleed, I will sing for you, dearest Hester. My memory is with the saints. My memory is with you, my one and only, Lady from Budapest.

DEAF JOE Mary Clark

Time to join da goils for a drink. Nothing fancy about the old 9th Avenue bar: red plastic booths cracked open in places like they had been slit with a knife, smeared mirrors lining the walls. In back a medley of rickety tables and chairs lingered in the dark like uninvited guests. No food was served anymore. "Evenin’, Annie," she said to an older woman at the bar. "Hows’re you, Mare?" "No use complaining." Cath, the bartender, set them up and came around the bar to sit with them. A group of yuppies in a booth by the wall stared as Cath put an icepack to her head. "Got a show, girls?" "Chorus Line." "That’s a good one, I hear." "We’ll be working awhile anyways," Annie said, observing the yuppies in the mirror. "But things could be betta. It’s not the same. There’s too much standing around, and the pay’s too low. The young ones in the union won’t fight," she said. "I don’t mean you, Mary. But we was fightas

then, those of us started the union." "Who’s that guy down the bar?" Mary asked them. "Giving us the eye."

"Just poke him and ask him," Annie said. "Don’t know him," Cath said. "Must be new around here. Been here all day." "I don’t mean to offend you," Mary said to him, "but two or three of us are wondering if you are what’s-his-name on that prime time soap opera." He smiled at them. Blond curly hair all primped up, clear

light brown eyes like a cat. He looked like Baby Jesus’ older brother. Cath grinned at him. "Not in my forty years of bartending did I ever meet such a pleasant gentleman." Last night after drinking for hours, in silence, he left her a large tip. "I’m not saying nothin’." Annie gazed straight into the mirror behind the bar. Mary turned to study Annie’s expression, reflection. The man grinned again. "He can’t hear a word we’re saying," Annie said. Cath looked at him. "What?" "He’s deaf. Take a look. Right ear." Cath and Mary craned forward for a closer examination. He grinned and raised his glass to them. "My name is Mary, and these are my friends Cath and Annie," she said loudly. "Joe," he said. Just then Patrick came in to replace Cath behind the bar. She sighed, shook off her shoes. "Hello, Patrick," Annie greeted him. "How’re you doing?" "I’m still moving," he said. "Must be alive." "My feet are killing me," Cath said. "Eight, ten hours a day on my feet. Can’t do it anymore."

Joe motioned to Patrick to set the girls up again. "Oh, he’s all right," said Cath. Annie got up, went to the jukebox. “I didn’t know this was here, but someone played it the other day." She dropped in the coins and the sing began. "What Will My Mary Say?" She and Cath sang along, their voices infused with the wine of memory, hands on their drinks. Mary watched Joe as the women sang, and he nodded, and she smiled back at him. The yuppies’ suppressed laughter broke the spell. "It’s not like it used to be," Annie said. "Years ago, everybody knew everybody here. Now you drink with strangers." "Yeh," Cath agreed. "Now, nobody knows nobody." She squinted into the mirror at the yuppies. "The way it used to be, if someone came in here and shot ten people, you didn’t see nothin’. It was gangsters and it was their business. Now, if some guy comes in here and shoots one person, it’s a big deal." "This is still a neighborhood bar," Annie said. "If somebody came in and shot the bartender, none of us were here. Right, Patrick?" Patrick nodded and kept wiping up the bar’s polished wood counter. He gave the charming deaf guy a hard look.

"I don’t know what it was," Annie said. "Maybe it was our scintillatin’ conversation, but the kids’ve gone." "Fine wit’ us." Cath eyed the bills they left and sniffed. She made no move to collect the money. They drank a while listening to the jukebox. Joe played a raft of songs. He stood by the jukebox, drink in hand, grinning at Mary. People drifted in and out and it was past midnight when Cath stirred. "Quittin’ time," she said, getting up, and waved to Joe and Mary. "Let the youngsters play." Annie waved goodbye as Cath picked up the bills the yuppies left. Mary lifted her glass, nodding goodbye, before turning to Joe. "I can’t keep up with those women," he said, tapping his drink. "I seen you putting them down." Then she asked him point blank. "You from around here?" "Grew up on 9th Avenue. Spent a lot of time in this neighborhood, from the Village all the way up to 59th Street." "I haven’t seen you around. And I would have noticed." "Just got out of jail."

"What for?" "Hold up man." She glanced at Patrick. No wonder he was acting nervous. "You got nothing to worry about over here. I don’t spend much time in this neighborhood." Joe raised his chin, indicating Patrick. "Look at this guy. How well do you know ‘im?" "He’s been here awhile, but he’s not friends with anyone." "Last night I was sitting right here," he said, "and I was watching this dude down the bar. He took an envelope out of his front shirt pocket and put some money on the bar. The envelope was full of bills. I thought, this is my lucky day. And I was just here relaxing." "You were going to rob him? Here?"

"I can wait until he goes to sleep or goes outside. Listen to this," Joe said. "The guy gets up to go to the bathroom." He nodded toward the black door scrabbled loosely into a frame at the back of the bar. "And this one comes out from behind the bar, acts like the guy’s drunk and needs help. He puts an arm around the dude and they both go down on the floor." Joe swiveled on the barstool to face the back of the bar. "Next thing I see he’s helping him up again. I don’t know," he said, his mouth twitching, "but when that guy got back here, he didn't have that envelope on him no more." "How do you know?" "Later on he was looking for it. He left here crying like a baby." "Maybe he left it in the bathroom." "I thought of that, too." He shook his head, no. Mary sipped her drink and noted Patrick’s broken nose and a large scar on his chin. Funny how she had never noticed these things before. "Look at ’im," Joe said. "He ain’t too happy to see me here tonight." "What are you going to do?" "I might have to teach him a lesson."

"Be careful," she said. "He’s got a gun on the shelf behind the cash register." "Another drink, Annie Oakley?" "Sure, why not?" Patrick filled their glasses and moved away again, pretending to stare past Joe at the avenue. Glimmering cars sped south, trucks clattered by, to the Lincoln Tunnel and downtown. Joe grinned steadily, first at Patrick, who backed up toward the cash register, and then at Mary. "It’s hard enough being a criminal," he said. "Now everybody’s getting into the act." He arched his eyebrows. "How am I supposed to compete with that?" "Foged abou’ him," she said, standing up. "This is not what I’m interested in." "What could it be?" "Deaf Joe," she said, "you got other business tonight." And that’s how Patrick the bartender survived to be shot another night by a customer he was trying to roll.

THE KITCHMAN

Chris Brandon

Valentine's Day night. Four p.m. on the sidewalk outside the Westway Diner, 44th and 9th. A local known as the Kitchman feels he's gotta give some shoulder to a poor young soul whose band's instruments were just ripped off from his locked van while he and his girlfriend had a bite at the diner. And if that weren't bad enough what was worse was that he and his friends' life compilation of songs they'd

written were stolen as well. Summoning up what strength and voice that remained for the inquiring Kitchman, the young soul says, "I just would've liked to see them. They woulda had to been ready for their last breath! 'Cuz he was taking . . . has taken mine!" And the Kitchman returns to the corner of the Avenue where there is more fire than earth, parched like it's waiting for some kind of "planting," vegetation . . . maybe some sage to appear.

Mural on wall of a building at West 52nd Street and 10th Avenue, later painted over

MINNIE & THE CROWD

Mary Clark

"I see them riding, the young girls on their horses," said Minnie, standing at her window. She was 89 and had lived in the SRO hotel room for thirty years. "They're going 'round and 'round," she told Sarah as the young woman entered the tiny room. "It's beautiful to see. I've been sitting here watching them all morning. "Round and 'round they go!" "Minnie," said Sarah, "that's the airshaft. You're on the third floor." She stopped when Minnie turned to her with a look of such beatitude that for a moment Sarah saw the young women riding the horses, clear as day. The old woman's expression left no doubt that riding in mid-air was perfectly natural, especially for young women. "Have you had your lunch yet?" "Yes, the man came," Minnie said. "He's very good. He left it for me on the table where I always ask him to." She spoke in a gentle, cooing way. "What table?" She looked around, saw it folded against the wall. "Here it is. Let me put this up for you. Was Tracy here?" "Oh yes, she was," said the diminutive woman, still

framed by the half light of the window. Behind her the red brick walls were black with grime, the smoke and dust of the city rising from the streets settled in out of the way places, on the living and the dead. Minnie was homebound, confined to four walls as much as if she had committed a crime and been sent to jail. Her only walk to freedom was to the bathroom down the hall which she shared with three others on the floor. The five story walk up Single Room Occupancy hotel was surrounded by skyscrapers and the hammering of development. Minnie had not seen the street

outside for years. She lived a block away from Times Square, but she could not read the news through the wall. It was possible to hear when the weather was good and the windows open, cars honking and a siren far away and know the city was still there. "She's always here to help. Oh, she's very good! I wouldn't say anything against her! Oh no! She does every little thing just right. Where would I be without her?" Minnie turned to her, "Would you like some coffee? "Oh no, thank you." Minnie sat on her bed, looking around the room, "But what is this crowd?" "What crowd?" Minnie motioned to the center of the room. "What are they doing?" "They're just sitting and staring at me. Why are they staring at me?" She sat up even more primly, and fixed her gaze on the bureau. "They never say a word. Oh no. They just sit there quietly and look at me. Like they're at a meeting." "Do you mind them being here?" "Sometimes they watch me eat," she said. "I don't like that. I wish they would speak to me. I'll ask them something

and they won't answer. I'll ask them directly." She leaned toward the bureau. "What can I do for you?" There was silence. "I think they must work here," she commented, getting up and walking toward the door, almost knocking down the table Sarah had put up. "I see them cleaning the bureau, dusting and polishing or fiddling with the lights. I wish they wouldn't turn them on and off!" Sarah smiled in spite of herself. "What is that man doing in that room? Thirty years in this room and I never knew there was a room there. It's right there, if you look here, yes, it's behind the bureau, if you look in a certain way." She peered into the far corner. "They come right through my room and slip past the bureau. A man lives in there. I didn't know he was somebody until I saw him on television. He's not just an actor  but he was singing and dancing! He does all those things. He never says a thing, but sometimes he comes into my room and just stands there looking at me. What a smile he has! Oh, he's not so handsome, but he knows how to dress when he wants to. He wants me to admire him then. He comes into my room to use a mirror. Oh, I'm sure he has one of his own. He wants to show off. He'll stand there combing his hair, or

shaving. At first I thought, what nerve! And with hardly any clothes on! Is that the way to come into a lady's room? I asked him why did he shave here? He just smiled. . ." She lapsed into a smile herself, still staring at the far corner. "And this is a woman's hotel. I don't know how he got this room. He dresses up in all these different costumes. That's how I knew he was an actor. I saw him putting on different hats, they were strewn all over the floor. His room is a mess. Some of them were very odd hats, too, almost like a woman would wear. They were women's hats. Yes, I saw him put them on." Abruptly she stopped, as if startled. "They're listening to someone speak. Sitting in rows. And that man!" "What man, Minnie?" "He just came in here and lay down on my bed! But he's an old friend. He hasn't been here in years. I suppose he's tired, so I'll let him lie here. I'll just move to the edge of the bed so he has room." "Minnie, you didn't eat. Your dinner's in the drawer here!" "Oh no, not while I have company." She gave the bed a sideways glance. "But dressed like that! His shirt hanging out. He's had his setbacks," she confided to Sarah. "But he's not the only one. I'll have to put the coffee on for him. If I

have a guest, I want to treat him nicely." She took her tiny coffeepot and placed it on a hot plate on the bureau top, adding, "though why he didn't tell me he was coming?" Tracy, her homecare worker, appeared in the doorway. "Hello, Tracy," chirped Minnie. "How are you?" "I'm fine, Minnie. You're making coffee?" "It seems I have a visitor. I thought I'd better get out some more food and make a pot of coffee." "A visitor?" She looked at Sarah who shook her head. "Yes, he just walked in," Minnie said and made a sweeping movement with one fragile, scooped hand, "swish!  and stretched out on my bed." "Is that the actor?" Tracy asked, then turned to Sarah, "She's supposed to be taking a nap." "She's supposed to have had her lunch." "Meals on Wheels came. I put it out for her." "It's in her top drawer." "Oh my God." She helped Sarah extricate the food from the drawer and place it on the table. "Minnie," she asked, "is this the one who's an actor?" "Oh no! He worked for Sears Roebuck. Many years. They forced him out."

"They fired him?" "He was of the age to retire. Let me check the coffee." She tottered to the bureau, her small frame not much higher than the old glazed piece of furniture. Everything in her room had a yellow light, and the rotting, spicy smell of aging flesh. She had not yellowed like an old newspaper, though. Her skin was pearly and pinkish-purple at the temples. Her features were small and sharply focused, nosing forward into life. How well she could see was anyone's bet. She seemed to see well enough when candy was in the picture. "He was sick, so they made him leave early. Then he had that operation, you know, that men have and he lost interest. You know, that's everything to them." Tracy was in the doorway in a flash. "Oh well!" she said with a wave of her hand. "Have a good time, Minnie. See you tomorrow." "Good bye, Tracy," Minnie said, but the other woman had already vanished. "It's good to be busy," she said to Sarah. "It's good to have a visitor even if he doesn't talk. He doesn't have to talk! God knows I've heard it all." For a moment she fiddled with the coffeepot. "It's almost ready. I'll tell him," she said, turning toward the bed. "Now what?"

"What, Minnie?" "He's gone!" She poised in the middle of the room. "I suppose he must have got tired of waiting. I'll have to put everything back and take the coffee off." Folding her hands in her lap, she sat primly on her bed. "You see, Sarah," she said, "it's a good thing I have a sense of humor."

A NIGHT ON THE TOWN

Forrest S. Clark

Harry liked the new kind of fantasy drink bars in the Duffy Square area. He often went there and planned to go on New Year’s Eve 1999. He figured that it would be only right to have a 21st Century hangover on New Year’s Day 2000. This particular night he decided that one drink was all he could hold. One drink and he could see visions in virtual reality, visions of the 21st Century. He took the high speed subway downtown in a matter of seconds. When he got there he found his favorite fantasy drink bar was closed. On the front door a sign with large red letters said, "Virtual reality beverages are harmful to mental health. This establishment is closed by the order of the New York Mental Health Board." Harry sought refuge in one of the few remaining old-fashioned liquor bars. As he sat at the bar drinking a Manhattan cocktail, he thought how simple life was in the 20th Century. "There was nothing like the good old-fashioned reality of the 1990s," he said to the bartender. "You got something there, buddy," replied the bartender,

mixing another Manhattan. Harry glanced outside the bar window just in time to see a flock of pigeons circle the statue of George M. Cohan. "Give my regards to Broadway," he muttered. A gust of wind ruffled the litter and carried debris down Broadway. Harry saw the deserted buildings, the Marriott Hotel now abandoned, merely an empty hulk, and beyond it the wreckage of the Time-Life building. There were no taxis in sight and only black holes where the traffic lights had been. "You know," he said, "it’s too bad they moved Times Square. I liked the old location."

hell's kitchen pros & cons

THE CAPEMAN MURDERS

The playground between 9th & 10th Avenues, West 45th to West 46th Streets, basketball court where the murders occurred

George Spiegler

On the night of August 29, 1959, the curtain went down on the performance of West Side Story on Broadway, Leonard Bernstein's paean to young love destroyed by youth gang warfare. It was a time when urban youth gangs

rumbled almost nightly in the streets and alleyways of most large cities across the land. Little did the theatergoers at the Majestic know that an hour later and just four blocks away, a real-life version of West Side Story would be enacted on the streets of Hell's Kitchen and that it would constitute one of the most infamous crimes in the history of a neighborhood long known for crime: "The Capeman Murders." The place: A playground [now Mathews-Palmer Playground] between West 45th and 46th Streets, midway between Ninth and Tenth Avenues. The time: 12:15 a.m. on a night in late summer, after a rainy day. The protagonists: Six neighborhood teenagers sitting on a bench in the park after three of them had attended a movie on West 42nd Street, and twelve other teenagers, members of a gang called the Vampires. A taxi cab screeched to a halt on West 46th Street about midnight. From the cab emerged Salvador Agron, the Capeman, who was decked out in a borrowed, crimson-lined black satin cape and fancy shoes, and Antonio Luis Hernandez, the Umbrella Man. Agron, a.k.a. Dracula, Bigfoot, and Machinegun Sal, aged 16, came from Brooklyn, where he used to lead a gang called the Mau Maus. He

moved on to become the leader of the Vampires, based in Manhattan's West 70s and 80s. He wielded a twelve-inch silver-mounted Mexican dagger. Hernandez, 17, who hailed from the Bronx, was his top lieutenant and drew his nickname from his habit of using an umbrella as a sharp-pointed weapon. The expansionist Vampires had come downtown for two reasons: they aspired to the turf south of 50th Street and they had heard that their fellow Puerto Ricans were being ill-treated by Irish and Italian teenagers in the area. A rumble had been arranged between the Vampires and the Nordics, to be held at the playground, coincidentally the scene of a spate of recent muggings. Only the Nordics failed to appear. Instead, minutes earlier, three teenagers on their way from the movies walked across the unlit playground, met three friends, two boys and a girl, and sat down to talk. At that point, led by the battle cry, "Where's Frenchy?" the Vampires came pouring into the park and circled the benches. When they realized the Nordics had not shown up, they turned their fury on the six local youths. Robert Young, 16, a resident of West 47th Street, was stabbed to death, dying in front of 449 West 46th Street. Anthony Krzesinski, also 16 and a resident of West 47th Street, was stabbed in

the back and staggered across 46th Street to 445-7 West 46th, where he fell in the doorway, saying to his friend, "I'm hurt. Get me upstairs fast." He died soon afterward in the apartment of Frank Zorovich and his daughter, Edna. Edward Riemer, 18, of Ninth Avenue, was also knifed and stomped, and brought to St. Clare's Hospital in critical condition. He ultimately survived his wounds. According to some accounts, some members of the gang held the boys down while Agron stabbed them in the back. One of the fatally wounded boys is said to have run across 46th Street holding his "insides in his hands." In the aftermath of the murders, cops descended on the block and more than 100 local residents formed a semi-circle around the buildings where the two teenagers lay dead. Initially, the police were unable to determine if the attacks involved gang warfare, even though they followed by a week gang action on the Lower East Side which left two teenagers dead and six others shot or stabbed. In a city reeling from youth gang violence, the murders in May Mathews Playground soon became famous as "The Capeman Murders" and still stand today as one of the most publicized crimes of the era, serving as the climactic event of the concrete jungle Fifties.

On September 2, Sal Agron, the swaggering, almost illiterate stepson of a Pentecostal minister, was arrested for the murders and brought to the West 47th Street station house (now the site of Ramon Aponte Park). When questioned by reporters as to why he did the crime, Agron answered, "Because I felt like it." Said Agron at the time, "I don't care if I burn. My mother could watch me." In fact, his mother, Esmeralda Gonzalez, brought him a Bible, which Agron refused to accept. Artist Victor H. painting a mural on the handball courts in the playground, one of several done in the1980s and early 1990s Agron's sidekick, Antonio Luis Hernandez, was also arrested, admitted being present at the crime scene, but denied any role in the fatal knifeplay. Two other Vampires were charged with manslaughter and the rest were hit with lesser charges. In the two weeks following the Capeman Murders, Mayor Wagner promised more patrolmen on the beat and leaders

from 20 Clinton organizations, including Msgr. McCaffrey of Holy Cross Church (who had buried Krzesinski), met at Hartley House, at the invitation of Assistant Director Edward Tripp, to discuss crime, the needs of youth and the neighborhood, leading to the creation of the Clinton Planning Council. The Capeman Murders riveted attention on the legions of dispossessed youth plaguing American cities, even as the country experienced a great age of affluence in the years following World War II. Here was Salvador Agron, who up until the age of 16, had spent half his life in poorhouses and reform schools in his native Mayaguez, as well as in several youth and detention homes in New York. His parents had separated when he was one year old. He had foraged for food in garbage cans and slept in hallways, after being abandoned by his real father in Puerto Rico and brought to New York by his mother. Agron bragged that he had stabbed five people over the years: "It was my usual procedure." His arms bore scars, plus some self-inflicted wounds. While imprisoned at the Brooklyn House of Detention shortly before the Capeman Murders, he inscribed "Liberty or" on his right arm with pins and blue ink. Said Agron, "I left death out because, when

Patrick Henry screamed, he had no choice and I thought maybe I might have a choice." Of the night of the murders, Agron said years later, "I was full of booze, full of goofballs, full of hate. I feel deep pain when I think of that night." The case went to trial in General Sessions Court in July 1960. Agron was charged with two counts of first degree murder and one count of attempted first degree murder. The Vampires' rules called for the youngest member of the gang to shoulder the blame, and despite the fact that he initially boasted of the slayings and despite a 44-page confession which led to his conviction, Agron would say many years later that "someone in that park did it and it wasn't me. I just took the blame. I had a nasty attitude." And: "My cape had no blood. My knife had no blood. The other knife with the blood of the victim was suppressed by the prosecution, was forgot. . . I can't see myself actually plunging in the knife." Although his attorneys contended that Agron was severely disturbed and was not a wanton killer, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. Hernandez, who pled guilty to manslaughter, received a sentence of 7½ to 15 years and was eventually re-tried, re-convicted and released on good time. Four other gang members received various shorter sentences which they

went on to serve. The trial lasted thirteen weeks and there was considerable controversy over whether or not it was fair. For many months after the trial, the case remained newsworthy. Agron affirmed over and over again that he could not remember the commission of the crime. In 1961, Anthony Krzesinksi's mother vowed retribution for her son's death. At the time, Agron was in Sing Sing and for 18 months the youngest inmate in New York State history to sit on Death Row. As the death penalty itself was undergoing increasing scrutiny, Eleanor Roosevelt initiated a campaign to have Agron's sentence commuted to life in prison, a campaign Robert Young's father supported. The long clemency drive ended on February 7, 1962, just six days before his scheduled execution, when Governor Nelson Rockefeller commuted his sentence to life in prison without any possibility of parole until 1993. Both trial court judge Gerald Culkin and D.A. Frank Hogan, who had won Agron's conviction, participated in the commutation drive. At the time of the murders, Agron said he was "a real skinny kid, skinny in the flesh and skinny in the brain." He was transferred from Sing Sing to Dannemora. From a kid

who could barely read a newspaper in 1959, he learned to read and to write poetry and eventually became known as a model prisoner. His rehabilitation came from Stella Davis, a House of Detention social worker who became his surrogate mother. Mrs. Davis not only taught Agron to read and write, but motivated him to take college correspondence courses and persuaded newspapers to publish Agron's poems. He also became a famed jailhouse lawyer, adept at writing legal papers and appeals for release, his own and others. He earned a high school equivalency diploma and then a B.A. in Sociology and Philosophy from New Paltz State University. He grew up to be a broad-shouldered man, 5'11" tall and weighing 170 pounds. Attorney Harry Kresky called him a "clear case of redemption." In a New York Times Op-Ed piece in 1975, Agron wrote: "I have been able to maintain the little humanity that was left within me, and working at it in the face of backward surroundings, have been able to cultivate my humanity...and increase my respect for all human beings. I will continue to make this a positive experience. However, how much is enough? How long does it take to correct or rehabilitate a first-time offender?"

At Christmas 1976, Governor Hugh Carey commuted Agron's life sentence, making him eligible for parole. However, in 1977, Agron absconded from a jail-release program at Fishkill Correctional Facility, fled to Arizona, and turned himself in two weeks later. He was extradited to New York, tried for escape and found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. The jurors were moved by his depiction of the horrors of prison life. In 1979, the Times referred to him as "robust, deliberate, pensive and philosophical as he prepares to regain his freedom as a man both physically and mentally refitted." Agron summarized his life experience by saying, "If a person acts toward me humanly, I must respond in a very human way. Otherwise, I would be a discredit to my own humanity, and I can't discredit my own humanity because it took me actually quite a while to get a hold of it." In November 1979, Agron was paroled from Auburn Correctional Facility and settled down to live with his mother, sister Aurea and her child in the Bronx. He took a job as a counselor with the South 40 Corporation, an organization using federal funds to help former offenders. Said Agron at the time: "When they say, Salvador, you're free, I smile . . . and I go out there and I see those ghettos and I see this

poverty, why, I say it's relative. Freedom is relative to the conditions. It seems to be very subtle, like something you chase." Salvador Agron died of a heart attack at a Bronx Hospital in April 1986. He was just shy of his 42nd birthday.

Neighbors on West 46th Street after locking the playground, March 1992

THE COLOR OF DIFFERENCE

Carrie Amestoy

"Within a month you'll be dead or, at best, raped." My mother is speaking. It is the first time in my life I've heard her use the word rape. The fire of pain and loss and everything I know about what mothers say in desperation is sticking to my skin. The way her red fingernails are wrapped around her own neck I believe for a moment she wants to kill with them. I believe she belongs in Hell's Kitchen here with me, struggling with the red. She doesn't believe in blue anymore either. But she wouldn't say it. She talks about home and peace and blue sky, but red spits out of her fingers and her open mouth. I've asked her about it. She says it's blue, all blue. Ever since time zero, I have remembered this world, processed this world in color. And there have been two worlds here that I've lived in. Somewhere I bridged the distance. Somewhere I, for one all-important moment, was holding hands with both the blue and the red in this world. I was linked with both, but knowing my heart too well; I chose. I am standing on the third flight of stairs in a tenement building in Hell's Kitchen staring at the bottom of a red door

four stairs up. The truth is not what my grandmother thinks. There is redemption here. There is promise. Knowing that the world becomes mine when there is nothing left to fear, there is promise. Blue was the world on which my childhood depended. It was the word I used when I only had eyes for the beautiful. Blue was about places of safety, open skies, pleasing the teachers, holding onto life in the small ways that children do. Riding down the tree-lined streets on my bicycle, I would swim in the blue. Breathing it in, smelling it on autumn afternoons, hearing its music, growing strong in it: this was blue  a coloring not only for the eyes but living in the senses. Tasting the blue when I was seven and would shove the honeysuckle in my mouth, it wasn't the sweetness but the safety of a thing growing in my backyard, of the way I'd watch it come and go with the seasons. This flower was part of my life, my family, my father's words and arms that surrounded me. It was as blue as my mother's eyes and as safe a place as the carpet in my parents' bedroom. I am convinced now at twenty-four that many people grow old with blue. They live with safety, comfort and worlds of commonalty for a lifetime. They decorate their homes and perceptions and experiences with the blue of life. They

spend a lifetime only seeking out a world which will love them back. If the blue faded with age and the red came in gradually, I saw nothing of the subtlety. I came up with the taste of red in my mouth at twelve as if I had been playing around in a poison box and run across all the joy in the world. But what ended as an introduction to the truth for my life, began with the rashness and stupidity of childhood. I was in tears with a mouth packed full of ice and metal slumped over the sled in the backyard, a closing winter coming down on me. Having slapped my tongue onto the red, gritty metal, I had moved headlong into the world of the unknown. The knowledge coming in waves of fear and anxiety that this ice, this sled, this thing which had looked so good was going to leave my mouth and take much of my tongue with it. Much did go with it. At twelve, smiling in the snow with a raw mouth, I touched fear and pain and loss. I became aware that survival is a sweet thing. And that tasting survival every day of my life would teach me how to live. Hell's Kitchen is about red. Last night sweating under one sheet in the single bed I knew it chose me more than I chose it. I believe in its risk. What it thinks of me, I can't be sure. It stares at me pretending to not understand my

English. I guess Hell's Kitchen pretends I don't live here. When I jingle the keys in front of the grandmother in the stairwell, she wants to know if they're mine. For now, yes. I don't know Spanish. What does "for now" mean to her? I wanted to let her know that I understand these immigration laws, I understand what this place means to her and my white skin is just a symptom, a symptom of this world to which she came. I rub my skin with an open palm. "Don't mind it," I say. She pretends not to understand. "Roho," I blurt out. She smiles at my lousy Spanish, passing me on the stairs. Roho is as good as it gets. She knows. She understands the risk. If red was as simple as unadulterated risk, then red would be about sticking needles in your arm, trips to the red light district, hitting the tables in Las Vegas. Even at twelve I knew these were the cheap explanations, the misguided associations. These were the easy lies about the red, the bad press, the tabloid means of teaching kids about preferences instead of values. And the lie that hurts the most is that people who embrace the red have no value for life, are somehow careless and uninspired with their existence. Always looking for the shock to their system, the land of the strange, risk for risk's sake. The truth I realized

when I started looking for it is that red is about living in places where people don't always speak your language, being in the constant stretch of reevaluating your perspective on living. It's about going places where there's little you truly understand. It's not about being jaded with conquest but knowing that there is always more deserving to be touched, felt and experienced. Red is about feeling your insignificance living in every cell of your body but still embracing a belief in destiny for your solitary existence. Growing, affirming life, and not giving in to all the dying: this red. And it all sounds so philosophical and glossy, but it isn't. At the end of the day, the most fulfilling thing may not be that I have written a novel, learned a new language, or healed the world of an ounce of its pain. Maybe, in the end, red for me will be about knowing that there are no regrets, no things that I would wish I had the courage to face but didn't. Maybe in the end red for me will mean simplicity and survival  the best, clearest, most honest way for me to have gone about the living. Red for me today is about looking at all the frustration, all the high walls and having the sense to laugh at the pettiness and lack of humor that I so often approach this life with. Red for me today is realizing that the most important thing I can accomplish is to find a way to get

past these barriers and touch someone else in their loneliness. And red is about knowing that to fail to do this one thing would be the greatest failure of my life. Maybe this color thing is a bit strange. Maybe it's nothing more than my way of assessing the difference. But this is something I see every day. You see color too, and it forces you to think about difference. I know that red and blue encompass more of our souls than white and black ever could. I know that I see blue running down the backs and through the eyes of people who look like me and who had the same childhood and parents that I did. And I know that I see red in people who embrace the risk of this world. These people have not always looked like me, spoken my language, had my education or upbringing. Many of these people who have been touched with the red have spent a lifetime overcoming hate and adversity out of necessity. For most of us, red is not about the adrenaline rush, or the edges that people are often trying to talk us down from. Red is about seeking out the side of life which will force us through challenge, difference and strength to live. Red is what I want to explain to my mother as she is sitting here with tears of anger and love asking me, demanding of me, "Why?" Why when she has given me so

much stability have I ended up needing so little? Why when she has always watched out for my safety, lived in the good neighborhoods with the "normal" people, why have I insisted that my soul didn't live too well there? And I want to explain to her that all that blue she built my life with has made me bold. All that blue has enabled me to fall in love with the red. The truth is that I can live with, breathe with all the uncertainty because enough of what exists inside of me is certain. But I'm here staring out a window on Seventh Avenue knowing that what I have worth telling is not what she wants to hear. I know this isn't what either one of us have been taught to expect. Six years ago she sent me off to Harvard; there was a plan for kids like me. Now I have no use for that plan. It feels ironic that I spent most of my growing up years telling my mother she expected too much when now it seems that she is expecting too little. A home, a nice car, a good job, a fashionable name: this is too little for us to be hoping for is what I need to tell her. That life would shut off the possibility in the world; it would cost too much to embrace it. This is what I need to tell her, but the silence is too severe and my words seem unconvincing. The red on the nail of her ring finger is chipping. I want to

tell her I was twelve when the blue started chipping. But there is no use; the fear has hit. Her hands are shaking. I tell her I won't become a hooker or an addict. I tell her I won't write trashy novels and won't stop calling home. I tell her all the things I won't become when what I am dying to let her in on are all the things I am becoming.

10th Avenue

Clayton Brooks at 4 o'clock in the morning there is more noise than at 1 or 2 or 3 so i go outside for one more pack of butts & to see what it's all about & it's just the usual  armies of window washers & the hookers the johns the drug dealers the junkies & the cops & it isn't even madness it is all just normal & routine & very, very sad. so i get my smokes walk back home lock my door & crawl under my sheets.

DEWITT CLINTON PARK West 52nd-54th Streets & 11th-12th Avenues

Homeless encampment at entrance to the park, 1993

Center of park after remodeling a few years later

hell's kitchen poetry

HELL'S KITCHEN

Shannon Mullen

The floors are so clean Wood shines golden in the sunlit patches. Books fill shelves around the edges of the room and the middle is left open between beautifully reupholstered furniture. Dark velvet pillows sit at attention on either end of an earth-tone futon couch.

And it is so quiet and peaceful and clean. But the toilet whistles when it's flushed and the cheap linoleum squares in the tiny kitchen strip are cracked and chipped and the bars form thousands of diamond shapes and cover the back windows like a scrim in front of factories and the tunnel's entrance below and crackheads cover the steps after two.

The vermin and decay come to light in the dark every night and after every dawn the sun streams in again. The empty vials and their purple and pink and green caps lie scattered outside the front door waiting to be swept off, while half dead mice scream in the kitchen traps and demand to be killed.

CONDO DAYDREAM

Bernie Steinman

Forty five and growing taller  Stories high above the avenue. Six hundred thousand and growing dearer  Dollars high above the poverty line. He steals a glance. Like a naked lady behind a shade. He steals a dream. And wonders what it would be like To live above the noise and in the air Where even dust feels out of place. But then the traffic light turns green And he continues on his way, slowly, Towards the intersection of Ninth and Reality.

ZOMBIES

John Newsome

Junkies on the corner waiting for a fix familiar faces barely recognizable How have they lost their way? Those who were at one time young, and full of life now walking corpses not knowing enough to lie down

A RAINY NIGHT ON WEST 44TH

Forrest S. Clark

The lights dance, flash and collide. Red water runs in the gutter, sparking the curb. Watery fires burn in puddles along the sidewalk. Vapor rises in ghostly wreaths about corner hydrants.

Water dashes against the cab window. Yellow bombs explode below theatre marquees. Crowds stand within the circle of yellow light. Black drops descend "Coming Attraction" signs.

Glass doors revolve, pushing coiffured girls Into the arms of top hatted escorts. They shake water from their sleek bodies, Urban spaniels ardent for "First Nights."

While chestnut vendor fires sizzle near, A man passes, his suit pin-striped by water, A girl, face masked by purple droplets, Hurries down a subway mouth, eager for warmth.

THIS HEART

R.D. Thomas

THIS HEART HAS BEEN TEMPORARILY CLOSED FOR EMERGENCY REPAIRS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. SOME CONNECTING ORGANS MAY ALSO BE AFFECTED AND ALTERNATE ROUTES OF COMMUNICATION AND TRAVEL WILL BE POSTED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE TO PREVENT MASSIVE AND UNMANAGEABLE GRIDLOCK. THE POTENTIAL MALFUNCTION WAS DISCOVERED BY THE ASTUTE OBSERVATIONS OF LOVING COMMUTERS WHO DISCERNED THE HEART HAD BEGUN EMITTING CONFLICTING AND THEREFORE CONFUSING MESSAGES. WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE DELAYS AND INCONVENIENCE. HAVE A NICE DAY!

SILENT DANCING

R.D. Thomas

I HAVE FOUND MY VOICE AT LAST. NOT SOUNDS REPEATING SOUNDS BUT THE MUSIC OF MY VOICE. CRESCENDO CRASHING AGAINST MY EAR. THEN BEGUILING APPEALING ARPEGGIOS SOFTEN THE BLOW, PIANISSIMO. I HAVE FOUND MY VOICE AT LAST. NO MORE SILENT DANCING WAITING, WONDERING WILL THE MUSIC EVER START? EMPTY TUNES OF LIFE EXIST NO MORE I HAVE FOUND THE MUSIC OF MY VOICE ONE DANCING HEART, TWO DANCING FEET SWEEP AROUND THE FLOOR THEN SWEEP AROUND THE FLOOR ONCE MORE WITH LOVE'S CHARMING CHOICE IN COUNTERPART I HAVE FOUND MY VOICE AT LAST NOT THE GUTTURAL GRATINGS OF "I'M FINE, THANK YOU, HOW ARE YOU?" NO! I HAVE FOUND THE MUSIC OF MY VOICE ONE DANCING HEART, TWO DANCING FEET I HAVE FOUND THE MUSIC OF MY VOICE NO MORE SILENT DANCING.

ON THE PIER IN LOVE

Chocolate Waters

I touch your hand. the sky connects. The water's so blue it escapes from your eyes.

The pier disappears. The sun explodes. The water swallows me.

THE TURQUOISE DRESS

Chocolate Waters buttoned down from here to China, the spaces even as the rows of corn you used to eat. It was a Nippon; the turquoise so blue it stung our eyes. bought it second-hand in Fairfield for five dollars. Some place called Merriweather's or Pennyfeathers or a penny for the thoughts, the memories the rich had left to charity.

I wore it with the French perfume you gave me when you liked me. I wore it the night you told me I was feminine. I wore it on that day you said I'd never be your friend. I flung it over the banister of my front porch steps, flew it off the banister like a breeze, hoping some deserving soul might take it all the way to China.

There was this guy who used to hang out in the neighborhood. He was skinny as a row of corn. You said he was a deck hand or a deck hand's lover. He was a transvestite Or a transsexual. Someone rich had loved him once then stopped. The sinking silicon inside his cheeks, the plastic surgery half undone

One morning on my way to work I caught a spark of color, flying from the doorway of the Cortes gallery next door,

so bright it set my eyes on fire. The transsexual-transvestite, my turquoise dress slipping down around his shoulders, struggling to get past his scarecrow arms.

The last time I saw that dress was evening, discarded in the gutter, wilted, never seeing China, scaring all the birds away.

SHOESHINE MAN RETIRED

Chocolate Waters

Everyday he stands in front of the Jax Laundry, a cup of something hot and dark or clear and forgetful in his hand. Stones move more. He wears a down-green coat that's reversible and less than new, the other side off-white as his hair. His beaten leather satchel is anchored close by, a monument to stability, a refuge in the concrete. Inside there's Kleenex, crumpled paper bags from Smiler's, half a buttered roll, a polka dot umbrella, sometimes Thunderbird, sometimes a nameless gin. If you took a picture of his face from day to day the only thing to change would be the angle of the sun. They were taking pictures of him yesterday; a camera crew with lights and flash doled him out a brand new twenty. This regal man, totem to long-suffering, still standing for the time when he will shine again.

DREAMING ON THE WIND

Marc A. Thomas

In the middle of the darkest of black spaces a huge bed is stationed in the center upon approaching this bed in which you lay I find your body sprawled across it you lay motionless with no expression on your face your body is strong and beautiful its arm, legs, thighs, and waist are thick with a manhood not shared by others your penis and testicles hang heavily like a bunch of ripening grapes on a vine that needs tending to your chest and nipples are confidently thrust forward as if you were awake standing guard over someone precious not wanting to awaken you it is my thirst for you which prompts me to climb up your slumbering body like it were a rose covered trellis leading to the stars despite the absence of a celestial collection of brightness it is your heavenly body I seek and have found your body not startled by the arrival I've brought to it you open your eyes and greet me with a kiss from your sweet lips the sheer delight of the thrill of what's to come shines in your eyes with a brilliance that could only be eclipsed by the sun.

SUNDAY PROMENADE ON WEST 43RD STREET

Raymond St.-Pierre

I sit at my louvered window, encased in the shadow of thought, watch matinee crowds queue and chatter, the New Jersey matrons of charter-bused fame, agog in a group after gaggled group on their weekend retreat. Shoppers bagged and baggaged, weave and heave their way through cluttered sidewalks of people as scenery. Stoop-shouldered tenement dwellers share rain-cleaned steps with time-hollowed indentations and wrinkles, watch as I watch  the sunlit Sunday promenade, the unnatural passage from light to shadow, from brownstone to silvery tower, each a definition of light and horizon.

The slow memory of old hills and maple-strapped landscapes receded in the onslaught of noise and voices, the vendors of exotic odors and concomitant odd foods anachronistically mix with clatter-hoofed carriages wearily wending their way to rest and Have A Nice Day buses

tunneling loaded to New Jersey.

I am left in shadowed wonder, observance at the incessant impingement subsequence of these minuscule moments and motions, at their muttered monstrosities and unmitigated meanderings toward melodrama.

This spring cleaning of thoughts and urbanized visions keeps me at the window ledge, peering out through a trained horizon of dracaena, aloe, avocado and avocation; a separation of vision from thought, a commingling of confusions.

ON THE FIFTH FLOOR

Jameson Currier

When the painter arrived, I helped him move the sofa, and there it was, twisted around the back leg. A moment of lust must have tossed it there, years ago. I know it was yours. Black cotton bikini.

Undergear, circa 1980. I sat on the sofa and brushed the dust away, then pressed the fabric to my nose, hoping to find your smell again.

The painter, of course, thought I was really queer, but he stayed with me a while longer, though, after hearing your story.

HELL'S KITCHEN

Jameson Currier

I never thought I would memorize The brittleness of your bones.

The promises of tablets, capsules, pills, The needles of your war. Those memories are my scars, Love remembered like a startled dove.

But I will never understand The way the world is without you.

AN OBJECT

David P. Duckworth

Perhaps it is made of wood  A lathe's fluting. An ivory white skin. A spindle of detailing from a crib With a spot of blue decoration. The blue of delftware. A small delicate cluster of shapes along its conoidal spine. In the gutter of a train track. And I'm looking wistfully, My eyes on home. Perhaps it is a flute Or some woodwind instrument, Some handcarved carrier of mountain winds. And the train rumbles on Over the pebbled tar and soot Of use. The pulse is through these tunnels. Along dustpan alley. This cavern relinquishes thought. Humanity wears leather thongs of silence, The Silencing vows of holy water and pew. A stilling omnipresent descent upon heavy shoulders. Perhaps it is a candle  Its waxy exterior intruded upon By its begrimed destination. It shines brightly though. Yes, a child had been here And the mist of a mountain sanctuary.

A GLANCE

David P. Duckworth

"Tha's the way it is." A man lain flat on the sidewalk In bright gray afternoon A T-shirt to match the yellow ball of sun A piece of pie in the sky Cookin' on a warm autumn city block And I pass by "He done his ownself all harm and no good."

That bright yellow man is drunk But more importantly, the sun's rays pierce his brow And his arms softly wiggle beside himself Lay bare that open wound  The stringent hands of society stroke it Vanish identity Laying to rest the dead

Crumpled brown leaves scuttle down avenue Or lay immobile until the next wind comes The brown leaves then curling up Reaching for the sky's clarity Abandoned to hollow dry veins

"I was watchin." The fierce eyes of Hades Rain down upon the victim of time and circumstance As all eyes are witness to their neighbor's decay All hearts have lain open to their neighbor's despair And final judgment transmuted

To a single glance over the withering organism The single soul-less vessel of benumbed agony A chalice filled with the blood and stench of mortality "Let that man be. Ain't no way he knows his own now."

DeWitt Clinton Park, children’s area, fall afternoon

The Authors

Clayton Brooks' plays have been produced at the Nat Horne Theatre and INTAR Lab, among other Off and Off-Off Broadway houses. He recently optioned his first screenplay.

Mary Clark was the director of the Poetry Festival at St. Clement’s for five years. Her poetry has appeared in The Archer, Lips, and Freshtones, an anthology of women writers. She founded and edited the Clinton Chronicle, a monthly community newspaper from 1993 to 1998.

Forrest S. Clark is a retired journalist who has written poetry, news stories, and reviews of New York life for fifty years.

Darryl Croxton, actor, writer, poet, has recorded four albums of poetry and drama for Scholastic Magazine and Harcourt-Brace. He has appeared on Broadway, Off-Broadway and in public service commercials for the United Negro College Fund.

Jameson Currier is the author of Dancing On The Moon: Short Stories About AIDS, published by Viking Penguin Press, and his debut novel, Where The Rainbow Ends, will be published by The Overlook Press in November 1998.

R.D. Thomas is a dancer, actor and choreographer, who has appeared in seven Broadway musicals. He has presented his one-man show, “Silent Dancing,” at Don't Tell Mama on West 46th Street on several occasions.

Raymond Saint-Pierre's poetry has appeared in Parnassus, Bardic Echoes, The Nile, Gay Sunshine Press, The Amherst Review and several anthologies.

Chocolate Waters received a 1995 New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in poetry. Her work has appeared in Fireweed, Sing Heavenly Muse!, Iron Erotica and By Actors For Actors.

Bernie Steinman and John Newsome are Hell's Kitchen residents who write poetry for the hell of it.

The Artists

Forrest S. Clark has been sketching city scenes, landscapes and people for many years. His sketches, Water Towers, appear in the stories, “Babylon Blues” and “Minnie & The Crowd.”

Philip Levine began painting street scenes of Hell's Kitchen in 1997. He studied art in France, helped found the Art Students League of Denver, and recently returned to his hometown, New York. His painting, Bicycle Shop on 9th Avenue, appears in “The Kitchman.”

Raúl Manzano has received an award of excellence from the Audubon Society in Los Angeles, and from the Artists Society International in San Francisco. He is president of the West Side Arts Coalition, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping multicultural artists exhibit their work. His watercolor, Cat on a Roof, is the cover art for “The Broadway Cat.”

Cyn McLean lives and works in Hell's Kitchen. She curates art exhibitions at the Times Square Hotel on West 43rd Street several times each year. Her paintings appear:

Westside View in “Babylon Blues,” Rooftops at Sunset in “Deaf Joe,” Empire State Building, in “Minnie & The Crowd,” and Toward the Hudson in “On The Pier in Love.”

Photographs, including the cover, are by Mary Clark, with the exception of the one showing neighbors Alexandra Palmer and Watty Strouss with Mary locking the playground in 1992, also the property of Mary Clark, and the one of the playground in “The Capeman Murders” that came from a West 46th Street Block Association newsletter.