Photo: AlexiusHoratius, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Dawn in Poughkeepsie should not be underestimated. When you come from a place that is no place in particular, you don’t own the pen that writes towns off. I was not granted Brooklyn’s dry wit or Santa Fe’s storms. I was born in Middletown, a vinyl flower crown of Arby’s and Old Navy’s. Nothing was aged enough for nostalgia. Nothing was creative enough for pride. Everything was subdivided and satisfactory.
No one should be proud at 6 am. This is an hour for animals immune to pecking orders. Coming from Middletown it was inevitable that I be infatuated with Poughkeepsie. My college town was an hour from home. It spritzed its own neck with cumin and garlic.
While other freshmen slept, I pushed the curlicue iron gate. Much is open at 6 am in Poughkeepsie. Beyond the Vassar bubble, falafel was frying for breakfast. A man with eyes like Al Pacino preached to squirrels, scattering day old rye sacraments.
A newsstand jester bowed at the waist and guessed my name every day. “Is it Esmeralda? Are you Stefania?” I agreed to tell him if he got it right. Some mornings he refused the dollar for my Diet Coke. He agreed this was “superior to coffee. Bernadette?” He hid behind an open Vogue and growled “Is that my Geranium?”
My mother did not approve of her duckling spelunking the “city” this way, not even when I wore the black leather blazer I had received unbidden for Christmas. She was from Brooklyn. She knew what pungent places might tuck in their We Are Pleased to Serve You sacks. Innocence is drowsy. A petal from Middletown can’t be too careful.
But much was open. I was awake. The corner store sold 4oz cans of Giorgio Pieces n’ Stems Mushrooms, which I brought back to the dorm to savor like Oysters Rockefeller. The cashier wore shamrock antennae on St. Patrick’s Day and approved my purchase with a shout of “fungi for breakfast!”
There are no gargoyles in Poughkeepsie, which is neither Paris nor Princeton. There are sanitation workers singing Jean Valjean’s soliloquy, and bodega proprietors who yell down the sidewalk, “you have hair like a Hobbit.” A grandfather in a paper hat will sell you the first hash brown of the day. Rumpelstiltskin may guess your name. Things are open and opening. You can buy artificial begonias for $0.99 a bunch. They are meant for gravestones, but they are suitable for offering to professors without explanation.
Angela Townsend graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College. She is a six time Best of the Net nominee, and her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, SmokeLong Quarterly, and West Trade Review, among others. Angela writes for a cat sanctuary, laughs with her poet mother daily, and loves life affectionately. She can be found on Twitter and Instagram.