Battery Park City of the Grown Up
Old School
9 years
I used to roam the halls
Cafeteria booths
Third floor recess yard
Rachel in kindergarten
Krystal in first
Sonia in second
Judy in third
Haiva in fourth
Adam in fifth
Katie in sixth
Carmen in seventh
Saeed in eighth
Gym with Jon
Elissa the nurse
Terri and Nico in the office
Now I check in before entering
Can’t leave the first floor
I used to roam the halls.
BPM
Battery
Place
Market
All of the phases went through
After school snacks with babysitters
PAID stickers
Butter Bagel season
Matt buying Gatorade for the whole football team
Lunch paninis
Gum
What was once a place of excitement
Is now just a store
Matt’s House
Spongebob after school
Marion made snacks
We were young
we played games
Not a worry in the world
​
We grew up.
Sleep at Matt’s after late nights
No time for Spongebob.
West Thames
Grass to turf
Bridge to no bridge
Birthday party to birthday party to
Football every day after school
I broke Liam’s nose
Late night middle school hangouts
What didn’t happen at the park?
Our sacristy
Picasso
The pizza place of all pizza places
Almost as if Picasso himself graced the oven
Two slices had you set for the rest of the day
Hours spent sitting at the wood tables
Just being kids
As the story goes
We lost Picasso to the greedy landlords
Brookfield
My once daily walk
Now bi-weekly at best
Hudson Eats
for lunch
and team dinners
Le District
for post practice pastries
Stores
Ice skating
Warmth
The provider of shelter
The route home
The Ballfields
FootBALL
Base BALL
Soccer BALL
Little League
and Pick-up
Catcher, Goalie
and QB
It is high it is far it is gone!
The Rockefeller
The swings where we swung
​
The court where Matt broke his wrist
​
The grass where the sprinklers attacked
​
The cement ping pong table
​
The playground with the red nets
​
The prime location for games of tag
​
The backup park
The Pier
​
The secret spot
Swings that were pushed to their limits
Fences that were climbed
Grass that fielded games of football that never lasted more than twenty minutes
Now a forgotten space
Instead of the pier we go
Beyond.
The Bike Path
The
Bike
Path
The
Right
Path
The
Pathway
From
BPC
To
The
Upper
West
Citi Bikes
E-Bikes
Please
Don’t
CRASH
Artist Statement:
​
With this project I focused on Battery Park City. I attended the Battery Park City School (PS/IS 276) from kindergarten to eighth grade, and I wanted to show my perspective looking back at the place I grew up in. I still go to Battery Park often, but now the way I navigate the area is much different. The subjects of my poems were decided by the places that are most prominent in my memory. The structure of some poems varied, to further communicate the feeling of my experiences. The orderly structure of Old School stems from the regulations I had to follow as a student of NYC public schools. The most memorable ones being no hats and no gum. The randomness in the beginning of Matt’s House was meant to represent us running around as kids. The poem then gains structure as I mention my experience there now. In homage to my baseball playing days and endless hours of home run derbies with my friends,The Ballfields features the text in the form of a ball and a baseball bat, with the final words "it's gone" being largest and therefore the most emphasized. The staggered lines in The Bike Path are meant to resemble a path going off into the distance. The word “west” appearing on the far left is a small flourish to further give a sense of direction. The images that illustrate each poem are pictures of the place I have written about. I utilized a drone to capture the images from above because the poems are reflections on when I was younger, and the downward perspective underscores the idea of looking back from a distance.