The Literary Review
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Lost on Staten Island
Somehow I’ve gotten lost on Staten Island.
It’s a dark night. I’m in another dream.
I can’t tell if I’m in Stapleton or Tottenville,
can’t see Perth Amboy or Brooklyn,
can’t make out the Verrazano or Outerbridge
from the trees.
I’m walking along the railway line worried
I won’t see the foggy eyes of the train lights
bearing down. I take shelter behind bushes
where I hear voices muffled in the distance.
I’m lost and nothing looks familiar.
I see a street corner come into view.
Buses line up at the curb. If only
I could cross this set of tracks. If only
I could get there where an overhead
streetlight and life exists.
I might be able to navigate a way
to St. George and from there catch
the Flying Dutchman to Manhattan.
Rubbing The Porcupine
I’m in the chair again after two years.
The barber’s a stranger whose body
nudges mine as he comes close.
His razor buzzes through swaths of hair,
leaving a clear path in its wake.
Long, brown-grey curls gone. His blade
licks all my head, tufts fall. I’m shorn.
As if fresh from confession, sins at last
forgiven. Like a bad friendship finally
ended, or one washed up, and there’s no
more growing. Like a love lost, a split
ending, a falling out. How this man
touches, tilts, plays with my head,
relieves me of all these accumulated inches.
Now that a pile sits on the floor like and
a dearly-loved pet that’s been put down,
come here and rub my newborn crewcut.
It’s prickly like a resurfaced porcupine.
The Moon And You
for Al Harris
The beams of that clear full moon
purported to purify, heal, release
past pain and bring rapid change.
We, your two companions, could feel it
on our dusk walk below the Palisades,
along the Hudson’s edge, after dinner.
Dan and I laughed, said it seemed all
things in our lives closing, opening
to new chapters, new connections.
Dan went home. Later I sat alone
outside my apartment looking at that
special moon moving in the sky.
I saw it strike a tree, dissolve into cloud.
Next day, something kept me from going
out again. Then the call from your family:
Come quickly. Al’s back in Hackensack
Hospital. He’s not expected to see the day out.
I was minutes too late to say good-bye.
I sat in ICU, keeping your body company.
Dan arrived, broke down. Michelle, too.
We talked about it and were mad at that moon,
moon, moon, and you for leaving.
Cameo Years
Mother wore a cameo,
a pendant on an ornate gold choker,
a wedding gift, a Gibson Girl
in profile on carved shell.
After a few years of marriage,
enough time for me to remember it,
she took it off, and it disappeared like her
own early, unattached years.
I found it again soon after she died.
Found it tarnished but intact
in the back of her drawer, inside
a plush, crushed red velvet case.
Shaped like a scallop,
unopened for years.
Second Massage
Anxious, my first massage was blasé.
The second, my muscles proclaim, success.
The Korean masseuse welcomes me back.
She guides me to a cubicle.
The room’s dim; ambient music plays.
White candles burn on a shelf.
I strip down to my shorts.
I’m facedown, under a white towel.
This woman oils up her hands.
She spreads warmth along my back.
She loosens and relaxes my limbs.
Hot black stones click near buttocks.
Taking time, she kneads my feet.
I grin and exhale, almost asleep.
For sixty minutes I’m in bliss.
Lightheaded when she whispers: All done.
Clothed again, she escorts me out.
She hands me a small water.
I’ll attain Nirvana again: two weeks.
First Yearning
It’s 1969. I’m 12. Quentin’s Theme
from Dark Shadows: Shadows of the Night
is playing on Top 40 radio. I’m swimming
in the inground pool of a friend
of my father’s. We’re on Russell Avenue
in Wyckoff, in Jersey. It’s a sunny,
mid-summer afternoon. It’s about
to get hotter.
The next-door pool boy has come
over to get instructions for next week.
Out of nowhere he catches my eye.
I leave my siblings and swim over
to the edge of the pool. His body
splayed out lazily in a lawn chair.
Perfect feet, bare. Jeans, tight.
Muscular chest, under a tee.
Strong arms, tanned. Short hair,
brown. Eager eyes. Relaxed smile.
A few years older, all masculine grace.
He moves and I feel the first
yearning for something I cannot name.