Guterzug - Poem

Literary Review, Wntr, 2004 by Matthew Lippman

Guterzug

   What if a man in a white truck rolled up
   45th Avenue
   while I sat on a stoop
   and shot me in the face?

   What if the 7 train west
   flew off its elevated tracks
   and blew up on Jackson Avenue?

   Every now and then
   I get to thinking
   that color is the bubbly haze of a car wreck.

   What if the two Eurasian hot heads
   punched me in my eye
   while I drank a Sprite?

   Queens is full with blue sky.
   It is an epic tale that won't shut up.

   What if all the rock doves in Manhattan
   headed for Jersey
   and left their dark wings behind?

   and if the 75 foot wave came from Australia
   drowned us upside down
   while the sun was a horse
   that galloped away into blue?

   There is a freight train
   inside a courtyard
   inside a memory
   that is in German.

   What if the Germans
   weren't German
   and knew nothing of fire?

   The sky is an epic
   that just won't shut up.

Matthew Lippman lives in Brooklyn. His recent work has appeared or will be appearing in The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, West Branch, Double Take, and The Beloit Poetry Journal.