At the Club
They enter together,
words bouncing against
the frontier, both sides.
A man, a woman, made
even more foreign
by soil of birth.
On darkened floor, they
throb to rhythms ecstatic:
her eyes tranced nearly shut
by the hard roaring beat;
her narrow hips undulating,
her red shining lips pressed
tight together—her slender torso
yields to his grasp, given freely,
nearly encircled by two big
hands as Donna Summer cries
and moans the pounding pulse.
Alien no longer
frontier broken through
hands interlaced
as they leave.
Thunderbird
Staring glassy, butt-smack on the pavement,
he pulls off a shoe but the force throws him
down on his side. Baggy sweatsuit and a big plastic
bag that says UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER.
From the shadows comes a voice:
Just out the hospital and fucked up already.
I told him—Get the hell off Nassau Street,
you drawin’ too much attention.
He’s up again—a wild lurch at a NO PARKING
sign, then he spin-stagger-falls hard against it
and down; so I call nine-one-one on my cell phone.
A cashmere-sweatered Ralph Lauren mannekin, big
hard nipples, watches the blindered crowd push past.
Four muscled cops, four EMTs. My man shakes
his head NO; they strap him down. The stretcher
rolls over the curb; his bobbling head ba bump,
ba bump. The ambulance screams back down
Witherspoon Street, straight to the Medical Center.
Pledge
My refuge, by root-cracked sidewalk—
first house, right marriage, slow fissures.
My refuge—your innocent bared torso,
hair garlanded, back arched, breasts rising.
My refuge from love’s stinging lashes—
you brought calm, fat babies, distraction.
My refuge from cogwheels of commerce,
through long years of deception’s dark duties.
Ten thousand days and more we dissembled,
patched, painted, did what was expected
till the storm, long forestalled, roared riot, tore
through, laid bare our battened-down hearts.
We now pledge to clear the dense bramble,
look as straight as we can at the sun.
Dare You . . . I Dare You.
Last Tuesday after school
Mrs. Nardi picked us up
for Cub Scouts and on the way
we saw two kids jumping
real hard on the frozen lake.
When we heard the sirens,
the whole den ran down the lake.
Mr. Smith across the street—
he heard the sirens too.
He grabbed some clothesprops
and he ran down the lake.
One of the kid’s big brothers
dived in the water after them.
The ambulance crew
got one of the boys, but
the other one drowned.
Mrs. Nardi took us back
to the meeting. Then we went
to the woods on a nature hike.
