The Delancy Street exit off of Route 1&9

is the most beautiful place in the world, very early

on a late spring morning, when

dew rests indifferently on the scrap metal dumpsters

and the overgrown grass splitting the pavement

of the vacant parking lot. Plastic bags snagged

on roadside weeds inflate like lungs,

bloom with exhaust-tinged breeze, like roosters

puffing their chests crowing for morning.

An invisible conveyor belt of airplanes hovers

above the road ascending, descending, screaming

through the sky, almost-but-not-quite grazing

the convex rooftops of every home in Newark

standing in neat little rows,

and Nossa Senhora de Fátima and Virgen María are

open-armed and vigilant outside the homes

standing in neat little rows.

On the opposite side of the street, Continental Trading & Hardware

is as full as the bars will be on Friday night,

as full as Delancy Street will be when it swells

with packs of hatchbacks and coupes screeching and howling

at the moon beneath the insomniac city night sky,

tires clawing pavement until the cops come, all lights and sirens.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve exited

on Delancy Street just like I can't count

the number of times I've gotten drunk in this city

all the times I've become a long-legged animal

teetering down the sidewalk in ankle-snapping heels

enamored with my existence howling at the sky like a hatchback

speeding down Route 1&9 and wanting only to inhabit

some other body in some other place

to live some other existence.

Dear City. City of dreamers. City of beating hearts

from ten thousand places I’ll never see.

To know that this city, this exit, this traffic light

is the only place we’ll all ever share

makes me want to hug each and every

body, if only they’d break, if only they'd wait,

if only they'd let me merge already because

I've been here, at this traffic light,

for what I think is forever. Maybe

I’ll see one of these drivers later. Tomorrow night,

next week, next month. In some rodizio restaurant

or a bar that plays vallenatos, and if we can hear

our voices over the music, we’ll fall

into conversation as easily as the cars

on Delancy Street scrape their fenders against one another

in careless urgency, just enough to change the moment's trajectory

just enough to leave a mark. We’ll step outside for a cigarette,

spring night air luscious in our lungs (only now,

because tomorrow morning the city will be motor oil)

and if our voices can rise above the noise,

all this machine and human, we’ll tell each other

what we already knew before we even opened our mouths,

those things we think make us special.

But tell me again. I love the story of our dreams.

Of loving this place and never wanting to leave

and of longing for nothing more

than to board those planes

whose wings nearly kiss our rooftops,

whose engines split our ears.