Boston

by Tisha Nemeth

 

i

Fourteen hours of driving reduced
to ninety minutes
jet stream
pushed air currents
from the Atlantic

aircraft, too, sensing
get her the hell into the city

changeless Back Bay
dull-lined, cracked brownstone
eyeing buildings' stone beams
yearly, its emblems
cause this heart to sink

strategizing
with cab driver
my arrival
navigating Storrow's river drive
of complexities

the Charles River does this to me,
Beacon Hill notched its stone in my throat
pre-emptively
eyes empty its water
in deference
to this strip of land, owning it, every inch
knowing it, like I know
striations in my right hand
returning to this diversion,
and while I've given up hunting
here, I am still hunted.

I come here for myself
touching long bloodlines
connecting again
with the long dead
bloodlines
and I
continue on
treading upon
ancestral clans
now underground

re-connecting this life,
touching what I've known
but is no longer

I own this ground I walk upon,
I can't live in this place, but I can't live
without it

city continually reminding me of this

ii

Here, the dead live off the living;
in diligence, I return
to feed them back their blood
line, weakening within me
trickling to its end
this bloodline stops with me:
by choice I've no heirs blood-blessed
to pass its inherited, maddened largesse.

1699
Johnathon Loomis died in Boston
with his enduring East Coast name
(each one I know and trace back)
dying the alcoholic's death
leaving their women;
the Loomis men famous for this
choosing death over women,
the lineage's peculiar struggle
which never passed
living with three generations of redheads.

With conscious strength
all our women lived; settled away
evading Boston, made it to Connecticut

women I have loved, all buried here

and while not much fazes me
Connecticut's state
has become
redheads' generational burial ground

(why this still disturbs me).

© 2003 Tisha Nemeth

Tisha Nemeth has poems featured in local and national poetry literary reviews (Hazmat Review, Peralta Press, RiversEdge - University of Texas, Curbside Review, Poetry, This Hard Wind, ArtCrimes, etc. etc., ad nauseam). Much of her poetry is based on her work experiences in art galleries and museums: Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, Harvard's Fogg Museum, The Frick Collection in NYC. She's also the lit-obsessed poetry editor for www.CoolCleveland.com

Read articles and find other works
by Tisha and George Nemeth at;
www.CoolCleveland.com

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