Walking Down Park

The poem opens with reference to “park / amsterdam / or columbus” (Lines 1-3), which are three iconic streets in New York City. NYC is significant as a hub of commerce and a densely populated multicultural area with Indigenous roots, where white European descendants paved over grass, rolling up all of nature “into a ball and call[ing] / it central park” (Lines 17-18). “[A]msterdam” (Line 2) is also a city in the Netherlands, and “[C]olumbus” (Line 3) is the name of the explorer who most people believe “discovered” the Americas. A “park” (Line 1) is something that human beings make by claiming the natural world and putting boundaries around it, designating it as a space for human use.

The speaker, by focusing on these three names in particular, draws attention to the history of colonization in the city—both the colonization of nature and the theft of land from its original inhabitants. This history intersects with the colonization and enslavement of Africans, and how enslavers brought them to the US to be used as “stock” (Line 12). Though colonization and slavery often go by different names these days, noting that the streets are still named after European cities and figures—especially controversial ones like Columbus—shows that the legacy of that colonization still dominates the social, political, and geographical landscape.