Old Shul: Poems

he swam way out past the shadows cast / by the steel towers of the indifferent gray bridge / shielding the traffic flowing rhythmically back and / forth, far above the little dead lighthouse that stopped working long / ago when there was nothing left down there / that anyone still wanted to see.

Pinny Bulman's poems chronicle his coming of age as a young religious Jewish man against the backdrop of the Dominican and Puerto Rican culture in Washington Heights - two worlds that co-exist but rarely overlap. As he moves beyond the past while holding on to it, Bulman creates the presence of people, prayers, and places long gone, in the same way "time could turn loss into patina." Bulman's precise language allows him to conjure up poignant moments without running the risk of becoming overtly sentimental: but in the end when things melt / what we're left with are these carved out spaces / each with its own beauty of absence.

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