Brian Docherty
A Side Walk of New York 
From Memory Harbour: A Reading of Jack B. Yeats
Brian Docherty reading A Side Walk of New York 
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This is not at all what he imagined.
His grandfather told him tales of Brooklyn,
Greenwich Village, Harlem, Central Park,
the great Public Library and more besides,
yet this looks & sounds more like Kansas
as described by his big brother in a letter
on his travels down the Missouri River.
That figure there must be a real Indian,
yet what is he doing here so far astray,
weren’t the Indians Reserved out to Montana?
He feels like asking the passing sailor
“Excuse me Sir, is this all there is?”
for the man has a Sligo look to him,
and would surely stop to answer him,
not like the people who scowl & wave
their arms in strange tongues, as if
nothing here is what they were promised.
Perhaps this is not really New York,
or only a sort of gateway or waiting room,
like the Big House in Galway where
his sister Annie is a chambermaid,
and once his father gets things right,
they will move on or move in, to find
the city of plenty grandfather promised.
Yet the weather may be that promise,
Spring arrived with a blaze after Easter,
turning Sligo’s rain to a bad memory,
its endless stirabout & potatoes likewise.
Last night his mother cooked chicken,
saying there would soon be plenty more.
His grandfather told him tales of Brooklyn,
Greenwich Village, Harlem, Central Park,
the great Public Library and more besides,
yet this looks & sounds more like Kansas
as described by his big brother in a letter
on his travels down the Missouri River.
That figure there must be a real Indian,
yet what is he doing here so far astray,
weren’t the Indians Reserved out to Montana?
He feels like asking the passing sailor
“Excuse me Sir, is this all there is?”
for the man has a Sligo look to him,
and would surely stop to answer him,
not like the people who scowl & wave
their arms in strange tongues, as if
nothing here is what they were promised.
Perhaps this is not really New York,
or only a sort of gateway or waiting room,
like the Big House in Galway where
his sister Annie is a chambermaid,
and once his father gets things right,
they will move on or move in, to find
the city of plenty grandfather promised.
Yet the weather may be that promise,
Spring arrived with a blaze after Easter,
turning Sligo’s rain to a bad memory,
its endless stirabout & potatoes likewise.
Last night his mother cooked chicken,
saying there would soon be plenty more.
Brian Docherty was born in Glasgow and now lives in North London. His first collection, Armchair Theatre, was published by Hearing Eye in 1999.
Page(s) 32
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The