Poem: Namesake

You’re a martyr,

He said—

Laughing as I jumped into the water.

Constitution Island—

Trespassing prohibited—

Where the trees laughed too.

Into the Hudson,

No,

The Muhheakantuck—

In between two backstrokes,

I spit the brown water towards the sky.

Brackish,

With an aftertaste of fuel,

Has always been my thing,

I thought—

Drifting in a river that flows two ways.

This article appears in January 2016.