Willie and the White Girl
Laid off after 24 years at Bub’s Lumber Yard
Eliezer Loggins moves
from Biloxi, Mississippi to the Big Apple
with his two sons and ends up
working as a super on a three-floor
walkup on East 108th Street.
Nine months later he sits on his front stoop
wearing his straw hat
a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon in his hand
doing his best to understand
what is going on around him.
It all seems cockamamie:
the constant fires and break-ins,
the surging traffic and sidewalks,
the radios blasting in español,
the kids who stay out all hours of the night.
More than anything he can’t
figure out what happened to his two boys:
Bobby—now known as Bosco—
drinks wine all day
and has already been locked up twice
for stealing and fighting.
Willie, the boy who a Southern minister
said had a heart of gold,
spends all day chasing after some white powder.
Where had he and his wife gone wrong?
Two months ago, Mr. Loggins put a whumping on Willie
and threw him out in the street
after he caught him picking through his wallet.
But he couldn’t stand seeing him sleep
in the alleyway
and let him stay in the basement
on a bunk made of wooden boards
on the earth floor by the furnace.
What really stumps Mr. Loggins
is the white girl that stays with Willie,
not a day more than twenty,
light yellow hair like margarine on spaghetti,
blue eyes in muddy pouches,
plump in spite of the black staples
running up and down her arms.
Willie calls her Pinky
and it’s Pinky that now brings him
his white powder.
Whatever she’s doing to get it
is grinding her to dog shit.
Willie just stays in the cellar
his body frozen at the corner of his bunk,
his shaved head like an oily eight ball,
his lower lip hanging down.
That’s how Mr. Loggins finds him
when Pinky comes to tell him
that Willie won’t wake up.
Muzzled
Right in front of the cute cashier
in the hill-top restaurant
chin-bearded Toni the Butch
sticks her hands down my pants
to see if her puppy is alive and kicking.
I keep my mouth shut
since she carries a Cuban pig-sticker
and just lent me ten dollars in rolled-up pennies
to keep the hungry dogs of dope at bay.
The Interview
It’s a night-dark November morning.
I’m at the bottom of a stairway
somewhere in the South Bronx
at a drug program called Logos.
My face has an orange sheen
like axle grease. I shiver
from the icy drafts
blowing through my golf jacket,
the only outer garment I own.
My bony ass is sore
from sitting on a wooden bench.
I want to split but remember:
ripping off students’ books
while they sat in the cafeteria,
selling my father’s stamp collection,
OD’ing on a rooftop,
carried down by dopefiends,
arms pinned behind my back,
hands tearing at my wallet,
my shirt, my shoes.
I think about waking up
with red ants in my marrow,
racing to the toilet,
vomit running through my nose,
the wad of shit in my throat.
Two hours go by,
I’m faint, vision blurred.
I want to leave but Nilsa warned me
—no more chances—
if I don’t get into Logos
she’s gone for good.
I hear whispers, laughter,
the echo of a piano
and vibraphone,
a voice singing
“…ratón, el ratón!”
People go up and down the stairs
staring at me.
I ask somebody for a smoke
and they look away.
Finally, a man comes--
sheared hair, missing teeth.
“Follow me,” he says.
“What took so long?” I ask.
“We’re a family here; we want to see
how bad you want to get in.”
At the interview I tell
a woman with a scar across her face,
how I’d done social work in East Harlem.
I tell a black man with an eye patch,
how I lost my moorings.
I tell an Italian guy with a withered hand,
I can’t take it anymore.
The woman shouts: liar, loser.
The black guy calls me a racist.
The Italian says I’m a white Uncle Tom.
My interviewers stand up,
leave the room.
I have no money,
no place to go.
I debate running
out the door, throwing
myself under a bus.
I hear branches bang
against the windows.
It’s beginning to rain.
In two days
it will be Thanksgiving.
Why I Became an Athiest
At fifteen
I got on my knees every night
praying Connie
would come back to me.
I prayed to God Almighty
unseal my lips
give me the power
to persuade her to return.
I prayed to the Holy Ghost
bestow upon me
the grace that would make
her mine again.
I prayed to the Virgin Mary
with her beseeching look
to fill my ex-girl
with yearning for me.
I prayed to Jesus Christ
to raise our romance from the dead
promising I’d quit whipping
my wood in Connie’s name.
After two weeks nothing—
no convincing words
no longing in my ex’s heart
no heavenly resurrections.
Bad Boy Pete
In eighth grade
when asked, "How's Bella?"
Pete sniffed
his middle finger
and said, "Fine!"
In ninth grade
he asked Mrs. Hickey
in our bio class
about her second set of lips.
In Porky Mason's
print shop class
he hid his marking book
stole a font of ink
smearing it on our bus driver's seat.
In tenth grade
he hung out in the front row
of the auditorium
with the colored girls
and lip-synched
"Daddy's Home"
by Shep and the Limelites
later bragging
'bout getting
plenty poontang.
In eleventh grade
Pete cheated on every exam
tampered with the line of scrimmage
at football games
shot out school windows
with slingshots and marbles
flushed cherry bombs
down toilets
engulfing hallways in feces
his lawyer father
having him reinstated
every time he was suspended.
In twelfth grade
he piped the Olympics '
"Bad Boy Pete"
into the school's loud speaker system
paid Brain-Job Brancatelli
to take his SATs
switched his graduation partner
so he picked up his parchment
with the Senior Prom Queen.
Pete attended Columbia
peddled triple X gelatin capsules
of horse tranquilizer
cigarettes dipped in embalming fluid
flunked out
and shortly afterwards
was found
in the front closet
of the 80 year-old paraplegic
aunt he was staying with
in New York City
with his head
cut off.