Bronxville, New York. Where Lee Stockdale finds shelter after a hurricane of tragedy blows his family out of Miami. As the new kid in town, he tries to fit in under the roof of a stepfather who regrets he came with the package. The secret of his fatherâs suicide, wrapped around the universal pain of being thirteen, assures that life pretty much sucks, and Stockdale rides through Bronxville on a Depression Bus until he grasps that he lives a train ride away from The Greatest City in the World. Bronxvilleâhe claims it as home, whether or not it claims him.
Bronxville, New York. Where Lee Stockdale finds shelter after a hurricane of tragedy blows his family out of Miami. As the new kid in town, he tries to fit in under the roof of a stepfather who regrets he came with the package. The secret of his fatherâs suicide, wrapped around the universal pain of being thirteen, assures that life pretty much sucks, and Stockdale rides through Bronxville on a Depression Bus until he grasps that he lives a train ride away from The Greatest City in the World. Bronxvilleâhe claims it as home, whether or not it claims him.
PART ONE: THE SUBWAY DOESNâT STOP HERE ANYMORE
My Dead Fatherâs General Store in the Middle of a Desert
It has gas pumps with red horses and wings,
but is not merely a gas station, your father is not my father,
standing over me with a clipboard, checking off things done and left undone.
He seems happy at this last stop before death for those living,
before life for those not yet born,
where his general store deals in flour, sugar, pieces of hacked meat,
or liver, reddish purple, a heart he wraps in brown paper.
He cuts my hair beneath the tin awning. I must have gotten here
from one direction or other on the road that stretches horizon to horizon,
the desert heat shimmering my eyes into pools.
I crawled in on my hands and knees,
he handed me an ice-cold orange Nehi drink.
Itâs pure coincidence that this store is my fatherâs.
I ask him where all this stuff comes from, as no trucks travel this road
to replenish merchandise no one buys.
He doesnât like questions that challenge his existence.
I become quiet, heâs cutting my hair
and might consciously or unconsciously make me look bad.
Youâre doing a great job out here, I say, which he knows is bullshitâ
how many fathers, even if they are dead, set up a general store in a desert.
I persist, You keep the shelves stocked, floor broomed, bathroom clean.
The more I talk, the more I encourage myself to love him for the trouble he went to
making all this seem real, with cans of various sized nails, beans, rice,
shelves of liquor, deli section with giant pickles.
I begin to see what a dear, sweet man he is. Is this because he is dead?
I wish he were alive again.
I donât think he killed himself to be mean to me personally.
At night, he says, howling coyotes come down from the mountains
and leave notes, Bible verses, threatening messages, love letters.
Everything a coyote wants to get off its chest.
I ask if they come every night.
He says, Without fail.
*
Bronxville
Bronxville city of magnificent possibilities
Bronxville university of fabulous mentors
Bronxville of choruses of choirs
Bronxville from early morning until late at night
Bronxville where dreams are dreamed and come true
Bronxville hive of intellectual bees
Bronxville workshop for literature and drama
Bronxville teeming with art and experiment
Bronxville with manifold unexplored doorways and corridors
Bronxville painters with easels of paint
Bronxville love on all horizons
Bronxville auditioning players for the play
Bronxville there is always work to be done
Bronxville every sky is the limit
Bronxville imagination resourcefulness given full rein
Bronxville where you fly without wings
*
Blue Star
On the train from Miami to North Carolina,
different cars for different summer camps.
Camp Blue Star for just Jewish kids
makes me feel strange,
I go to elementary school with these kids.
My father died.
We move to a town with no Jews at all.
My new stepfather makes casual jokes about Jews.
He calls them âHebes,â
their cars âJew canoes,â
Blacks are âBoogies,â
ItaliansââWops.â
A real estate broker, he wonât sell a house
to a Jewish family.
I hate my stepfather and call him Fat Frog.
I hate that town,
but today wear a Broncos alumni hoodie,
embracing my inner Bronxville.
My high school reunion is coming up,
Iâll go,
still trying to clean up my ugly past.
*
First Day of School in a New Town
The week before, I was in sunny South Florida,
today Iâm freezing in a foreign country,
Switzerland, maybe, with all the snow, since
we had to move in the middle of January,
where I stomp my feet in new rubber boots
at the city bus stop after school.
Here it comes,
I have never been happier,
and off we go up Pondfield Road.
After a while, we are so far from Bronxville,
I get off the bus to find a pay phone,
and tell my mother, Iâm in Mount Vernon.
Her voice is so angry I could have just killed a man.
Mount Vernon! Where in the world is Mount Vernon?
I donât know where Mount Vernon is,
but I got the wrong bus and thatâs where I am.
Oh, for Godâs sake, Iâll come get you.
I tell her the drug store Iâll be standing in front of,
and there she is with her diamond-cut eyes
burning a hole in my ineptitude.
*
Depression Bus
The Bronxville Town Council allocated funds to repurpose
a school bus for depression, painted leftover Day-Glo orange
from the previous summerâs Depression Fair.
The bus pulls into your neighborhood, you get on
and there are things to do: play solitaire, read old magazines, but
the Depression Bus âWILL NOT cure YOUR depression,â
expressly written on the poster with rules: âNo Smoking/vaping,â
âNo Profanity,â âNo Music.â Naming the bus
was open to the public from April 1st to the end of May. âHappy Busâ
got the most votes, but âHappy Busâ exposed the Town to liability
if someone did not, in fact, get happy. In a cooler
are free juice boxes and vanilla cookies in cellophane wrappers.
The bus has a limit of twenty depressed people over the age of eighteen.
If youâre under eighteen, Iâm not sure where you go.
When I saw the Depression Bus, it depressed me,
so I thoughtâI better get on.
The driver, reading a paperback, said, Make yourself at home.
I was the only one on the Depression Bus,
which made me feel even more depressed.
The more no other depressed people got on,
the more depressed I got.
I brightened when I saw Pete: Pete looks depressed. Iâm sure heâll get on.
I waved, but Pete pretended not to see.
Now and then, the bus driver laughed. I thought he was happy
about getting paid to park in neighborhoods and read paperbacks.
I asked what it was and he told me a title Iâd never heard of.
It started to rain. Then stopped after a while.
The driverâs laughter made me feel better.
He seemed like a naturally happy person.
I was no longer depressed and got off the bus.
If anyone asks, I will tell them the Town Council made a good investment.
I went into this collection without reading the synopsis and my first impressions were strong: it felt like a magical mystery tour through one person's experience as it is shaping him. However, it is reflective, being written about in the present with the insight that only comes from being older and more perceptive due to having lived.
I have to say that I really enjoyed it. The opening poem feels like the entryway to a dreamscape with its depictions of the poet's father's drugstore in the desert and the way that the poet moves within this setting with Twin Peaks sort of vibes that unsettle and discombobulate.
Then, we move on to something totally different, to a poem strict in form with every line beginning "Bronxville" with a short description of what it offers afterwards, almost like a mantra designed to convince.
This sets the tone: a progression through the poet's life, an autobiographical odyssey through a period of change and stress and adaptation and these poems form the first part of the collection called "The Subway Doesn't Stop Here Anymore". It has the uncertainty of teenager-dom written all over it but it also reads like the literary equivalent of an exhibition full of art installations that are curious to the observer but might not be grasped certainly in their minds on first viewing, or in this case, first reading of them. It is a reading experience that is a little surreal but benignly so.
My favourite in this first part is "Through A Store Window". It seems to be a poem about a normal misunderstanding of timings on store openings but by the last stanza becomes something entirely different.
The second part is called "Pure Pleasure" and is lighter in tone. It reads like scenes from life, memories and dreams that Stockdale is recalling and recording here for our perusal. They are more like musings and are observational; like "One-Act Play" which is voyeuristic, a vignette of two people's lives as seen by a detached observer or "Bronxville Train Station" which feels like a movie scene playing out, tinged with love and humour and normalcy.
Overall, this collection was surprising in its content and for me, entirely enjoyable: quirky, imparted with a unique voice which relayed personal experiences and insights in poetical form. Quite refreshing.