Poetas y Pintores: Artists Conversing with Verse

The Artist The Poet

Brookes Ebetsch Francisco Aragón

Untitled

2005

Mixed Media Sculpture, 5.265" x 5.5" x 4.75"

The Poet

Francisco Aragón

To a New Friend

October, 2001

Your need to fly east and walk

those streets, among your own

was no surprise. It was, I think,

akin to the worry and affection

I felt for a place in nineteen

eighty-nine: NYU in Spain’s director

caught me in the hall: Aren’t you

from San Francisco?...told me

a section of bridge, freeway

had collapsed, the Marina

on fire and so was plunged

in speculation, completely

alone for moments at a time—

no brother, no sisters, no home....

Until she called, restoring me. Her

weekly call for years to come

a kind of ground. A voice

on the phone: a touchstone.

As when I asked you to talk

of those years so I

could picture it: your bus

from the Palisades, exiting

Lincoln Tunnel, and then

a crosstown shuttle, changing

again at Lexington to ride to Regis

for four years. On my trip

in August, I retraced your steps

down refurbished halls,

cafeteria where as a freshman

you had to eat standing. I had asked

really, to picture you: a new

friend—your e-mails,

your calls...since my departure

for the midwest. Years ago

—her voice on the other end—

she sees no need for me to rush

back: it’s only been a week

since my return to Spain, Christmas

behind us (In between flights

all those years, I’d roam TWA’s

terminal at Kennedy—a place I didn’t

mind, straddling San Francisco

and Madrid all those years). From JFK

in nineteen ninety-seven, I call

from a pay phone and speak

to my sister, who says her breathing

is labored...I’m thinking now

of your mother: how, you said,

she grew up in that part

of Lower Manhattan; and years

later, before she died,

you stood with her

in the same plaza I sat in

last August, waiting

for my closest friend

from high school, temping

nearby, who loved

Joan Miró’s green, blue

red, yellow...—tapestry

we paused at in the lobby

of tower two before

catching the subway to a

computer class. My head

slightly throbbing, I listened:

he spoke of Katie, how his real

focus now was being a good

partner: that I do recall,

and the wooden Art Deco walls

in the elevator—riding up

the Chrysler Building

(your city, after years

of visits, truly glows

in me), and I remarked to George

it was the first time we’d

been together in a space

outside California. My plane

is lifting off, flying

west, touching

down at SFO, where my sister

is waiting to take me home

to her; but my brother’s

sitting beside her in the lounge

—who I wasn’t expecting to see—

which means: I’m too late.

for John Chendo, George Castillo

and my mother (1932-1997)

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