Poetry by Roger W. Hecht

       Nicholas Erwin CC




The Bridge


There's a joke: why does Ithaca have 
so many Buddhists? It's near Varna. 
Varna's a village that borders Cornell. 

There's an old, rusted railroad bridge
tagged with graffiti near Varna, a bridge 
that reminds me of a railroad bridge 

where I grew up. Each time we passed 
beneath that bridge, the B&O overpass, 
driving toward the DC line, my father 

told this story. The bridge, he said,
with its concrete abutments, its rusted 
girders & rivets, reminded him of a bridge 

his father told him about, in London, 
in a mostly Jewish neighborhood, 
long before the war, before 

the bombs that drove my father from 
the city to the countryside 
then across the Atlantic to America 

where he'd wait out the war, lucky
to be British instead of just Jewish,
so his boat full of children & German POWs 

was granted permission to dock. The bridge, 
he said, would be completely absorbed & 
locked away by London's famous fogs. 

It could be lost in smoke for days. There was 
this cop, he said, a real swine,  
who was particularly cruel to Jews

who everybody hated--the cop, not the Jews 
(but they knew where they stood). 
In one of those fogs the bridge vanished

& the cop vanished. Three days
& three nights later the bridge 
emerged, as it always did, with the cop 

crucified on its trusses. How ironic. My father 
told this story every time 
we passed beneath the bridge. He never

said who did this. Nobody knew.
Everybody knew. My brothers heard 
the story, too, many times, 

driving with our father out of our suburb into
neighborhoods wrecked by needles & riots. 
This was our family ritual, 

more regular than candles. & the point?
Stay away from railroad bridges? 
Bad things happen on railroad bridges. 

Billy Joe MacAllister 
met his end at a railroad bridge. 
The Klan lynched hundreds 

from railroad bridges. Drug cartels 
routinely suspend bodies from them.  
All kinds of statements 

are made on them. Near Varna, 
the bridge says something different. 
It celebrates the birthday 

of a beloved Cornell professor. 
Every year students would paint 
F.H. Fox is 89, 90, 91.

When he died, age 92, they painted 
F.H. Fox is 4ever. 
So what was my father trying to tell me? 

It was a story, a placement of fact
in my growing world of facts, (if it was
in fact a fact at all) that has lingered 

in the mist of me & lingers even now,
nearly a decade after his death. 
F.H. Fox is dead. The bridge 

reminds the world of who he was, 
reminds me of a bridge to my father’s memory
of his father’s memory of redemptive violence 

that is somehow part of who I am.   

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Political Economy


The feeder is empty,
the big birds gone.
Ten gray sparrows 
vie for a spot on one
of two little perches, 
a spot at a hole where 
they peck at air 
in hope of a seed.
The other, bigger tube
half full on its iron hook 
is guarded by a squirrel. 
These little birds get no respect.
When I re-fill the tubes 
the big birds return,
chase them away: grackles 
with their glittery heads, blackbirds 
with their red epaulets, jays 
in their tailored blue suits
all screaming mine, mine, mine
in their specific bird tongues
understood by all. 
Birds can be such assholes.
I watch through the window 
brimming with pity. I see myself 
in the small birds chased 
to the safety of surrounding trees,
but not in the squirrels 
who suck down seeds
like cheap cocaine. I see myself
in the small striped snakes 
I sometime startle out of the grass, 
but not in the frog a snake 
stalked & swallowed whole 
completely unbothered
by my watching from a different window.
I pitied the frog the cat dragged home 
from the woods by its leg
& was glad when it safely hopped away
once pried it from cat's jaws,
but not the rabbits the cat’s left 
headless, one less threat to the garden.
My ethics are conditional at best.
But what to do about the birds? 
The pecking order is a real thing
but its rungs are inconsistent. 
You can't impose justice on bird world,
each according to its need.
Each time I fill the feeder, I fuel 
the efficiencies of shifting hierarchy
& all the world's violence 
spills out before me 
over & over again.
So why do I do it? 
I like to watch. 
Like an asshole.

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Fritzi’s gonna put


Fritzi's gonna put the hurt on Nancy. Nancy knows this. Nancy’s a pocket full of id. She's a catalog of crimes only she is capable of—broken dishes, footprints on the ceiling, breaking into circus tents, glomming onto gobs of food. She's a chain of chaos from the moment Fritzi became an aunt and lost the title to her story, underling to an unclassifiable girl. Heart throb. Fireplug. Inventor of the afro. Soda fountain grifter. Dunce cap model of the year. She outsmarts them all. Sluggo gets her. Sluggo's got her, especially when the cutie dolls turn his head and lights her into a rage. Two poor parentless children skating the lake of frozen adult anger sublimating into dust: Fritzi's aspirations, pointlessly club-wielding cops, dog catchers' empty nets. In the glare of the sanctified residents of Three Rocks there's no authority, no clear set of laws. Except the long arm and clenched fist of Fritzi. Nancy hands her the hairbrush. This is not submission.





Roger W. Hecht’s poems have appeared in Gargoyle, Book of Matches, Anti-Heroin Chic, and A-Minor. His books include Witness Report, Talking Pictures. When he’s not playing drums he teaches American Literature and Creative Writing at SUNY Oneonta.

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