I.
I’ve been meaning to tell you that the skin around her eyes was thin
with blue veins fanning out like ferns that she was pale for a Puerto Rican
and that she spit and threw change at my feet as I waited to cross the street
to tell you that I wouldn’t let her man take me for hot dogs at the Second Avenue Deli
or to Jade Mountain for pork fried rice that I knew what a hat like that meant
to say his diamond crucifix the way he swayed his coat flicked sunflower seeds
from between his teeth strutting behind the line of parked cars I’ve been meaning
to tell you that the parking lot on the corner was not always a dorm that once I saw her
bloodied and on her back beside a car that two kids laughed pulling rings off her fingers
as she squinted in the sun that I put my backpack on both shoulders readied my key
that I ran from the sound of the sirens
II.
To tell you my dad drove a cab for forty years kept a red bean he got
from an Ethiopian guy in the back pocket of his Levi’s to ward off hemorrhoids
that he wrote me notes throughout the night on the margins of his fare sheet stuff
like “eat yogurt for osteoporosis” that he listened to Tosca for another life in which
he didn’t have his foot on any pedal didn’t ever have to chase a punkass kid to get his
money back then end up buying the kid a sandwich to tell you that he was a Jewish guy
from Brooklyn what the fuck he’d pound the wheel cut off cut short another Brooklyn
fare not going back there with no return trip over the bridge to tell you that he drove
like a pro back when the medallion itself was a thing of beauty deco-like clicking
its nickel intervals with approximate precision the weight of it enough to crush
just about anything
III.
I’ve been meaning to tell you that my mother and father once fought
for fifty hours straight in our basement apartment off Second Avenue
that the table fan was set to oscillate as they worked their way through
recriminations cups of coffee a carton of Marlboros that my mother
tossed a day’s worth of meals into her flashing wok at hasty intervals
as my father paced the room been meaning to tell you that the girls
on the block scraped pavement in their platform shoes like weights just outside
our one gated window that we often heard Peaches the transvestite weeping
about a Hasid john from Delancey Street or a guy from Staten Island who liked
to rip out her hair meaning to tell you that they made the movie Taxi Driver
right around the corner the year before that I thought my dad might have been in it
since he drove a cab had also been an actor was once a bartender down on Bleecker St.
that he said I was too young to see such a film and about Saturday Night Fever
my mother said definitely not
IV.
That there was a Nordic Track bought in 1996 still in its box
blocking the way to the coat rack on which my dad hung his London Fog
$3,000 in its pocket for me to collect as he had requested from his hospital bed plus stacks of cash
from the safe deposit box from under his mattress and the Polly-O Ricotta container in the freezer
beside the Eddy’s Light Ice Cream and empty ice tray been meaning to tell you there was $30,000
in my purse by the end of the day to tell you that I tried to buy a giant stuffed peacock from a shop
on Christopher St. the day he died but ended up lugging a duffel bag of twenties to Greenwood
Cemetery instead to purchase a plot for him on the hill I’ve been meaning to tell you that cash
is how a cabbie’s daughter pays her father’s bills to tell you there was a wall of books by his bed
a broken shutter on a split hinge piles of newspaper clippings to be filed per a system that didn’t exist
that he left his hack license on the bed-stand with the pocket knife we gave him the carnelian ring
the paper birthday crown my children made and made him wear buried in plush animals on the carpet
in their room that there was a rucksack of photos and mementos from his old friend Wallach
when my dad cleared out his place but never had the wake to tell you that he never
even opened the bag after humping it up the stairs just talked to Wallach in his head
every day till the end about the girl in those photos about articles he should have read
Tina Cane was born and raised in New York City. She is a poet, teacher and founder/director of Writers-in-the-Schools, RI. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Barrow Street, Hanging Loose, The Literary Review and Spinning Jenny. She lives outside of Providence with her husband and their three children.