The Gospel in Ordinary Time
I watched pensive Johnathan push his shopping cart slowly. He was making his usual rounds past the corner where crack falls from the sky like snow.
The bored cops looked on from their cruisers, more intent on watching those who walk with a strut.
They don’t know that the hunched cart pusher has the East End knocked. Knows better than most the comings and goings and who owes who.
He could fill them in on exactly where the ice floes will stick on the river. How many steps to the vacant crane cabin that keeps watch over Water Street. Why sleeping in the cemetery isn’t a bad deal. Which member of the Barrio Kings threw a bag of crack vials over the rail trestle with the cops in hot pursuit. Where the bag landed.
No shifts for Jonathan. Always on. Always alert. Which is why he's so tired and takes naps in the afternoon.
The men with armories on their shiny black belts took away Johnathan’s belt and CD player and never gave them back.
“You can’t afford a CD player. You stole it.”
So it was gone, held by the virtue of power where the evidence room becomes a members-only thrift shop.
But Johnathan needed a belt to hold up his baggy pants.
It was after his release, holding his pants up with one hand, that he first preached me the Gospel.
“No one really knows what they do to another. They think they know me, but they don’t. I forgive them.”
No more string quartet to make the downriver wind bite less sharply, but he still hums it in tune. His matins & lauds without headphones.
* * * *
The nuns are arriving at Johnston Street to reopen the doors after the early morning exodus of souls who slept on the floor with Vellux blankets and a new pair of socks donated by the parish of Saint Mary’s.
[Note: Let Sr. Monica know we have leftover mac and cheese in the fridge. The donations were good and last night’s feeding filled all of the bellies.]
I confessed to letting Frankie in.
Rule: no shooting up before entry.
[Which Gospel is that?]
To the amusement of other vagabonds, he’d fallen asleep standing up. Sort of.
A standing nod can take fifteen minutes. He bends slowly, eyes closed in a magical descent. The heroin-induced hologram he inhabits makes his departure and arrival deft and certain. The only flaw is 10-degree weather. Commence vertical as a plumb bob, straight legged on the sidewalk with hips like a hinge and head bowing to the flagstone. The upper body falls like a clock hand to a quarter past and stops. Someone bewitched.
I watch. Is watching helpful? I am seeing the East End with a birds-eye view that lets me fly away and return to a warm house: a place where walking on the road (no one calls them streets) is done for pleasure. Or Trick-or-Treat. The thought of a gunshot only comes after Ordinary Time in the echoes of deer hunters in the distance. The hunter. The walker. Baby on Board. Cars have bumper stickers. The who and what of persons is as plain as a traffic sign.
* * * *
In the spring, landlord thugs in dark-windowed SUVs break and enter for overdue rent. It must be too much trouble during the cold months. The city removes the thirdhand couches and chairs from the sidewalk with the garbage. It would have been out of place during the holiday season.
On clear days in spring or summer, a Paul Robeson doppelgänger strides up and down the street holding his King James high overhead and proclaims the red print like Amonasro. He never explains his own exodus but always returns to the promised land and walks steadily over the jagged cobblestones without ever looking down. Some skills stay for a lifetime. A proud basso voce and Newburgh’s river-bound acoustics carry the proclaimed parables several blocks down Broadway.
At the drop-in center on Grand Street, Clare does a brief headcount before closing time to find out who needs socks. She’ll walk the block to the shelter and rattle off names. I throw them from the storage room, a pair at a time, in a grubby game of catch.
Clare is tiny, gap-toothed and wears thick eye-glasses. Her breasts are large and seem out of place for someone so small. The men gaze upon them too long but their eyes retreat when they remember their moms. She moves about with the bearing of a mother.
She knows how to pose questions to those cleaved from human connection, which questions to ask in the open and which to ask in private. Clare is the roaming, realtime almanac of the East End. A trusted confessor. In her absence knowledge is a crapshoot.
In December, she helps plan the homeless count. The Feds are sure to schedule it inside the clutch of the cold months. Frozen-weather couch surfers and those in the depths of derelict buildings miss the tally.
Understatement remains a virtue.
* * * *
So what of the ladies?
The overnight shelter is a one-gender affair. When the Sisters of the Presentation arrive late in the morning, one or two sex workers may step in from the sidewalk.The oldest profession admits almighty skills where the dignity of work includes a talent for taking a good punch.
You will notice the newbies by their skin. The faces that still resemble a yearbook photo before mugshots leave likenesses behind.
Pimps play their part and ply the master trade with free and early offers of the backstabbing breakfast of champions. It starts with a smile before the hard-earned wage winnows away cursedly each week and the gift-with-purchase period expires. The subsequent scowl will erase any recollection of a gentle promise to the end of hard luck.
Fact: the ladies are tougher than the men. The more durable ones like Carolyn, who don’t disappear, will have a knife that you don’t need to see: the eyes will let you know. The sense of ill-boding must be prescient and borne of instinct.
When walking Ann St., they are shape shifters. A pair of four-inch pumps that advances a drive-by choice can become a weapon in an instant. Limits are made in the mind and the ladies must lay waste to them more quickly than the wrong customer.
Two nights ago, Carolyn did disappear. She had handed Jonathan her a wad of cash for safekeeping in his shopping cart. That was the last time anyone saw her. It was the first day of Ordinary Time. Jonathan attended Mass. Fr. Moore handed him twenty bucks after the church people cleared out. He was rich.
We stood at the corner. “I don’t need the money…what should I do? Maybe I’ll ask Clare. She will know” declared Jonathan.
“Yes, let’s ask Clare” I said.
© Kevin Swanwick 2021
I watched pensive Johnathan push his shopping cart slowly. He was making his usual rounds past the corner where crack falls from the sky like snow.
The bored cops looked on from their cruisers, more intent on watching those who walk with a strut.
They don’t know that the hunched cart pusher has the East End knocked. Knows better than most the comings and goings and who owes who.
He could fill them in on exactly where the ice floes will stick on the river. How many steps to the vacant crane cabin that keeps watch over Water Street. Why sleeping in the cemetery isn’t a bad deal. Which member of the Barrio Kings threw a bag of crack vials over the rail trestle with the cops in hot pursuit. Where the bag landed.
No shifts for Jonathan. Always on. Always alert. Which is why he's so tired and takes naps in the afternoon.
The men with armories on their shiny black belts took away Johnathan’s belt and CD player and never gave them back.
“You can’t afford a CD player. You stole it.”
So it was gone, held by the virtue of power where the evidence room becomes a members-only thrift shop.
But Johnathan needed a belt to hold up his baggy pants.
It was after his release, holding his pants up with one hand, that he first preached me the Gospel.
“No one really knows what they do to another. They think they know me, but they don’t. I forgive them.”
No more string quartet to make the downriver wind bite less sharply, but he still hums it in tune. His matins & lauds without headphones.
* * * *
The nuns are arriving at Johnston Street to reopen the doors after the early morning exodus of souls who slept on the floor with Vellux blankets and a new pair of socks donated by the parish of Saint Mary’s.
[Note: Let Sr. Monica know we have leftover mac and cheese in the fridge. The donations were good and last night’s feeding filled all of the bellies.]
I confessed to letting Frankie in.
Rule: no shooting up before entry.
[Which Gospel is that?]
To the amusement of other vagabonds, he’d fallen asleep standing up. Sort of.
A standing nod can take fifteen minutes. He bends slowly, eyes closed in a magical descent. The heroin-induced hologram he inhabits makes his departure and arrival deft and certain. The only flaw is 10-degree weather. Commence vertical as a plumb bob, straight legged on the sidewalk with hips like a hinge and head bowing to the flagstone. The upper body falls like a clock hand to a quarter past and stops. Someone bewitched.
I watch. Is watching helpful? I am seeing the East End with a birds-eye view that lets me fly away and return to a warm house: a place where walking on the road (no one calls them streets) is done for pleasure. Or Trick-or-Treat. The thought of a gunshot only comes after Ordinary Time in the echoes of deer hunters in the distance. The hunter. The walker. Baby on Board. Cars have bumper stickers. The who and what of persons is as plain as a traffic sign.
* * * *
In the spring, landlord thugs in dark-windowed SUVs break and enter for overdue rent. It must be too much trouble during the cold months. The city removes the thirdhand couches and chairs from the sidewalk with the garbage. It would have been out of place during the holiday season.
On clear days in spring or summer, a Paul Robeson doppelgänger strides up and down the street holding his King James high overhead and proclaims the red print like Amonasro. He never explains his own exodus but always returns to the promised land and walks steadily over the jagged cobblestones without ever looking down. Some skills stay for a lifetime. A proud basso voce and Newburgh’s river-bound acoustics carry the proclaimed parables several blocks down Broadway.
At the drop-in center on Grand Street, Clare does a brief headcount before closing time to find out who needs socks. She’ll walk the block to the shelter and rattle off names. I throw them from the storage room, a pair at a time, in a grubby game of catch.
Clare is tiny, gap-toothed and wears thick eye-glasses. Her breasts are large and seem out of place for someone so small. The men gaze upon them too long but their eyes retreat when they remember their moms. She moves about with the bearing of a mother.
She knows how to pose questions to those cleaved from human connection, which questions to ask in the open and which to ask in private. Clare is the roaming, realtime almanac of the East End. A trusted confessor. In her absence knowledge is a crapshoot.
In December, she helps plan the homeless count. The Feds are sure to schedule it inside the clutch of the cold months. Frozen-weather couch surfers and those in the depths of derelict buildings miss the tally.
Understatement remains a virtue.
* * * *
So what of the ladies?
The overnight shelter is a one-gender affair. When the Sisters of the Presentation arrive late in the morning, one or two sex workers may step in from the sidewalk.The oldest profession admits almighty skills where the dignity of work includes a talent for taking a good punch.
You will notice the newbies by their skin. The faces that still resemble a yearbook photo before mugshots leave likenesses behind.
Pimps play their part and ply the master trade with free and early offers of the backstabbing breakfast of champions. It starts with a smile before the hard-earned wage winnows away cursedly each week and the gift-with-purchase period expires. The subsequent scowl will erase any recollection of a gentle promise to the end of hard luck.
Fact: the ladies are tougher than the men. The more durable ones like Carolyn, who don’t disappear, will have a knife that you don’t need to see: the eyes will let you know. The sense of ill-boding must be prescient and borne of instinct.
When walking Ann St., they are shape shifters. A pair of four-inch pumps that advances a drive-by choice can become a weapon in an instant. Limits are made in the mind and the ladies must lay waste to them more quickly than the wrong customer.
Two nights ago, Carolyn did disappear. She had handed Jonathan her a wad of cash for safekeeping in his shopping cart. That was the last time anyone saw her. It was the first day of Ordinary Time. Jonathan attended Mass. Fr. Moore handed him twenty bucks after the church people cleared out. He was rich.
We stood at the corner. “I don’t need the money…what should I do? Maybe I’ll ask Clare. She will know” declared Jonathan.
“Yes, let’s ask Clare” I said.
© Kevin Swanwick 2021
POST RECITAL
TALK
BR: Welcome back, Kevin. Seems like a long time.
KS: It does indeed, Brent. But these days it’s kind of hard to tell, isn’t it?
BR: Yeah.
KS: I mean I’ve had conversations with people recently where I referred to something that happened last year only to pause and realize that it wasn’t last year. It happened two years ago. It’s very strange.
TN: Yeah, 2020 was a slow motion crash scene. So tell me… is your story set in current times, or pre-pandemic? Is there much difference on the mean streets?
KS: No I don’t think there is much of a difference, which is partly what this story is about.
BR: I’m speculating that this is based on your experiences in the city of Newburgh a few years ago. Can you tell us a little about that?
KS: Yes it is based on my experience in the East End of Newburgh in particular, from a number of years ago. The characters in the story—they’re based on real people—people I knew. Johnathon, for example was a person I was quite close to, who lived on the street, and that’s really where the story came from—was that experience. I was involved in a couple of organizations. One in particular: Newburgh Ministry—was down in Johnstone Street, is still there and still operating, and I spent about two years working down there with clients and people in the neighborhoods in the East end. And I’ve wanted to write about them for a long time but wasn’t quite sure how to do it.
BR: Well I’m quite cynical about what religion, and the Catholic Church in particular, have brought to the world. But you have an insight I don’t have, into its effects in this type of community. Is good work being done?
KS: Oh yes, while there’s plenty to be cynical about. But in fact the religious organizations, in the East End of Newburgh, and I think elsewhere in many cities around the country, do very important work, and if you spend time in these places it will become evident. And these are very special people and they’re not all from one creed. But someone once said to me about the East End: “if the folks from the religious community weren’t doing the work that they were doing there, the place would fall through its ass and hang itself.” And I think my own experience testifies to that. There are a number of ways to assess the role of religion in our lives in general but this group of folks that I worked with in the East End were molded in the tradition of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement. These are folks you don’t read about in the papers. We tend to read about the scandals that happen—abuse scandals, financial scandals, hypocrisy of various kinds. It’s always good for a headline. What you don’t hear much about is the folks who take the gospel very seriously and in… for some of them take it quite literally and this work, serving the poor and the homeless is a calling. And they are able to do it every single day. And that’s quite extraordinary, because without them the suffering that goes on would be even greater.
TN: Yeah… so tell us about your process of writing this piece.
KS: Well I’ve been trying to write about my experience in the East End for many years and have not been successful with it. In fact this didn’t start out as a short story. It was something else altogether, but the characters were so vivid to me and my recollection of their lives, and my interactions with them were all there and I needed to get it down on paper. And this is what came out.
TN: Hmm… well sometimes on this podcast we talk about the blurry boundary between fiction and memoir, but we haven’t talked about the boundary, or lack of one, between fiction and poetry. What can you say about that?
KS: Well I don’t think I’m really qualified to tell you where the line is between fiction and memoir, and poetry, and prose. Perhaps there are other people who can do that. What is interesting though is this started out as a poem, and as I began to work on the poem I realized that the form it was taking was the long line poem and there are some writers who can do that quite well—Derek Walcott, Walt Whitman of course, Lou Asekoff… and there are others. I don’t feel strong enough as a poet to be able to write a poem like that, and the more that I wrote I realized that I was telling a story, and this was unfolding more concretely as a story. So somewhere along the line it switched over from what started as a poem, to perhaps a prose poem and eventually a short story.
BR: What actually is meant by the title? What is Ordinary Time?
KS: I’m glad you asked. Ordinary Time is a term that comes from the Roman Rite, that refers to one part of the liturgical calendar. That calendar is organized around Christmas and Easter and their prescribed preparation periods, Advent and Lent. Ordinary Time refers to the periods in between that fill in the rest of the year we all experience in the Gregorian calendar. A time that corresponds with the bitter cold in the Northeast is that time between Christmas and Lent. Ironically this story was first published during that period—right during the federally mandated point-in-time homeless count. So Ordinary Time is something that is common to all of liturgical faiths, and you’ll see it for example in the Anglican Union, and the Lutheran and Methodist traditions, though they may not refer to it that way. That is, pretty much, the literal meaning but then there is what we think of as ‘ordinary’ in our day-to-day lives, and such a notion is cast against what we consider ‘extraordinary’ and most of us who live in a home and have a family and friends, and common social connections would consider what happens to Johnathon and Carolyn, or the kindness that is expressed in the mean streets as something ‘extraordinary’ but in fact it is quite ordinary and happens every single day of the year. What is also quite ordinary is homelessness, though we don’t like to admit it. It goes on and on across the country and it always has. So how could we call it anything other than ordinary?
TN: True. Now tell me, if this story was a film, what would you like the score to be?
KS: Hmm… maybe Tom Waits with some Gregorian chant interspersed.
BR: Ha ha… sounds good. So what writing projects do you have in progress, if any?
KS: I’ve been working on a collection of Hudson Valley poems and others that were written during numerous visits to Costa Rica. There are also a couple of story ideas I’m working on, one of which involves a group of people on a Marion pilgrimage to a shrine that is not officially recognized by the Church. People of diverse backgrounds, including a scientist and a journalist—sort of a modern day Canterbury Tale. I just can’t shake some of the religiosity in my characters. It’s what I grew up with and what I know. I had to stop fighting the City Hall in my head.
BR: Yeah I know what you mean.
TN: I don’t know if we’re in ordinary time or extraordinary time, but it seems we might have a little more of it than usual today. Is that possible?
KS: It’s certainly an interesting time.
TN: Yeah. That’s what I heard.
BR: Again, thanks for your participation today, Kevin.
KS: It’s good to be with you Brent.
TN: And thanks for your time Kevin.
KS: I had a good time.
BR: Well let’s do it again sometime.
TN: Yeah, but only when the time is right.
BR: Welcome back, Kevin. Seems like a long time.
KS: It does indeed, Brent. But these days it’s kind of hard to tell, isn’t it?
BR: Yeah.
KS: I mean I’ve had conversations with people recently where I referred to something that happened last year only to pause and realize that it wasn’t last year. It happened two years ago. It’s very strange.
TN: Yeah, 2020 was a slow motion crash scene. So tell me… is your story set in current times, or pre-pandemic? Is there much difference on the mean streets?
KS: No I don’t think there is much of a difference, which is partly what this story is about.
BR: I’m speculating that this is based on your experiences in the city of Newburgh a few years ago. Can you tell us a little about that?
KS: Yes it is based on my experience in the East End of Newburgh in particular, from a number of years ago. The characters in the story—they’re based on real people—people I knew. Johnathon, for example was a person I was quite close to, who lived on the street, and that’s really where the story came from—was that experience. I was involved in a couple of organizations. One in particular: Newburgh Ministry—was down in Johnstone Street, is still there and still operating, and I spent about two years working down there with clients and people in the neighborhoods in the East end. And I’ve wanted to write about them for a long time but wasn’t quite sure how to do it.
BR: Well I’m quite cynical about what religion, and the Catholic Church in particular, have brought to the world. But you have an insight I don’t have, into its effects in this type of community. Is good work being done?
KS: Oh yes, while there’s plenty to be cynical about. But in fact the religious organizations, in the East End of Newburgh, and I think elsewhere in many cities around the country, do very important work, and if you spend time in these places it will become evident. And these are very special people and they’re not all from one creed. But someone once said to me about the East End: “if the folks from the religious community weren’t doing the work that they were doing there, the place would fall through its ass and hang itself.” And I think my own experience testifies to that. There are a number of ways to assess the role of religion in our lives in general but this group of folks that I worked with in the East End were molded in the tradition of Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement. These are folks you don’t read about in the papers. We tend to read about the scandals that happen—abuse scandals, financial scandals, hypocrisy of various kinds. It’s always good for a headline. What you don’t hear much about is the folks who take the gospel very seriously and in… for some of them take it quite literally and this work, serving the poor and the homeless is a calling. And they are able to do it every single day. And that’s quite extraordinary, because without them the suffering that goes on would be even greater.
TN: Yeah… so tell us about your process of writing this piece.
KS: Well I’ve been trying to write about my experience in the East End for many years and have not been successful with it. In fact this didn’t start out as a short story. It was something else altogether, but the characters were so vivid to me and my recollection of their lives, and my interactions with them were all there and I needed to get it down on paper. And this is what came out.
TN: Hmm… well sometimes on this podcast we talk about the blurry boundary between fiction and memoir, but we haven’t talked about the boundary, or lack of one, between fiction and poetry. What can you say about that?
KS: Well I don’t think I’m really qualified to tell you where the line is between fiction and memoir, and poetry, and prose. Perhaps there are other people who can do that. What is interesting though is this started out as a poem, and as I began to work on the poem I realized that the form it was taking was the long line poem and there are some writers who can do that quite well—Derek Walcott, Walt Whitman of course, Lou Asekoff… and there are others. I don’t feel strong enough as a poet to be able to write a poem like that, and the more that I wrote I realized that I was telling a story, and this was unfolding more concretely as a story. So somewhere along the line it switched over from what started as a poem, to perhaps a prose poem and eventually a short story.
BR: What actually is meant by the title? What is Ordinary Time?
KS: I’m glad you asked. Ordinary Time is a term that comes from the Roman Rite, that refers to one part of the liturgical calendar. That calendar is organized around Christmas and Easter and their prescribed preparation periods, Advent and Lent. Ordinary Time refers to the periods in between that fill in the rest of the year we all experience in the Gregorian calendar. A time that corresponds with the bitter cold in the Northeast is that time between Christmas and Lent. Ironically this story was first published during that period—right during the federally mandated point-in-time homeless count. So Ordinary Time is something that is common to all of liturgical faiths, and you’ll see it for example in the Anglican Union, and the Lutheran and Methodist traditions, though they may not refer to it that way. That is, pretty much, the literal meaning but then there is what we think of as ‘ordinary’ in our day-to-day lives, and such a notion is cast against what we consider ‘extraordinary’ and most of us who live in a home and have a family and friends, and common social connections would consider what happens to Johnathon and Carolyn, or the kindness that is expressed in the mean streets as something ‘extraordinary’ but in fact it is quite ordinary and happens every single day of the year. What is also quite ordinary is homelessness, though we don’t like to admit it. It goes on and on across the country and it always has. So how could we call it anything other than ordinary?
TN: True. Now tell me, if this story was a film, what would you like the score to be?
KS: Hmm… maybe Tom Waits with some Gregorian chant interspersed.
BR: Ha ha… sounds good. So what writing projects do you have in progress, if any?
KS: I’ve been working on a collection of Hudson Valley poems and others that were written during numerous visits to Costa Rica. There are also a couple of story ideas I’m working on, one of which involves a group of people on a Marion pilgrimage to a shrine that is not officially recognized by the Church. People of diverse backgrounds, including a scientist and a journalist—sort of a modern day Canterbury Tale. I just can’t shake some of the religiosity in my characters. It’s what I grew up with and what I know. I had to stop fighting the City Hall in my head.
BR: Yeah I know what you mean.
TN: I don’t know if we’re in ordinary time or extraordinary time, but it seems we might have a little more of it than usual today. Is that possible?
KS: It’s certainly an interesting time.
TN: Yeah. That’s what I heard.
BR: Again, thanks for your participation today, Kevin.
KS: It’s good to be with you Brent.
TN: And thanks for your time Kevin.
KS: I had a good time.
BR: Well let’s do it again sometime.
TN: Yeah, but only when the time is right.
