The Literary Review
First Pedicure
Right now I’m sitting on the throne.
I’m the only client here, a man, facing a line
of Asian and Hispanic women of various ages
staring at me from across the salon.
They look at me. I look at them. They look
at me more; I do the same. Eventually
we all look away. One Latina comes forward
to begin my care. The rest have gone back
to looking at their phones. She removes my shoes,
socks, places my feet in a jet bath below me.
She miles at me, I smile at her. There’s
no small talk or conversation. Dressed
in a smock, her hair in a bun, she does
her job: my toe nails clipped, dead skin cleared,
cleansed with lotions, jet-bathed again, heel
and underfoot pumiced, perfumed
like an Egyptian King. In the half hour
more clients have come in, most for manicures.
A black man in a jogging suit, chatting on
his cell, sits two seats away. Two attendants
rush over to serve him, both hands and feet.
I pay, tip, leave thinking he must be
some kind of god.
- Patrick Hammer
Morning Glory
(for Patsy)
Heavenly blue Morning Glory
you trumpet year after year
early spring by inching up,
unattended, the telephone pole
announcing the news while your
green vines advance skywards too.
Last year someone cruel
ripped you from the pole.
It was naked in your usual
season. You were much missed
in the neighborhood. We thought,
like a lost soul, you were gone.
But this spring you sprang again
and rose up an even more
inhospitable metal street sign
just inches away. Your blue
and green-ness flourishes all
the way up to the sign: No Parking.
All summer, once again, you are
our bellwether until the first
fierce frost and then you
fall away, suddenly not there.
- Patrick Hammer
In The Pines
(for Hank)
Visiting my brother downstate
on Mystic Island, Ocean County,
on the Jersey Shore, we go
past cranberry bogs and forests
into the Pine Barrens
in Burlingon County in search of
The Jersey Devil.
We travel dirt roads, deeper
into the Barrens. Forks
in the road give way to even
thinner dirt roads, all without
street signs, lampposts, post boxes,
but we know there’s life.
We stop the car so I can take
pictures in the eerie silence.
We find ourselves outside a dive bar,
The Lower Bank Tavern, where
the weather beaten sign says:
FUN, FOOD & SPIRITS—
DO IT IN THE PINES.
Little more than two shacks
combined, but the place pulls us in.
Old men, old salts, dads
and sons drink this late afternoon.
I hear their conversations: catching
tides and working the waters.
We order a couple Jack & Cokes.
They eye us suspiciously then
look away. There’s a menu board.
We order something to split
from the weather beaten woman
behind the counter who knows everybody.
‘The chef’ from the kitchen brings us
a thick liverwurst sandwich with
raw onions and hot mustard on rye.
She’s weather beaten too, mussed
hair, but offers us a genuine smile.
We baptize the ancient trough
in the Men’s Room, take no growlers,
have found no devils, but head for home,
bellies full, before full dark in this
WiFi-dead zone.
- Patrick Hammer
Wind Chime
He bought a small wind chime—
petite metal pipes on a petite
lightweight string.
Secured it to the bottom
of his always-lifted shade
in his front window.
He waited to hear it chime.
Windy days, stormy days—
nothing. He waits for a sound.
Morning breeze, evening hush—
no sweet brushing of light
metal against metal.
One afternoon, in a random gust,
a frail low flow of notes rang
out. He was not home to hear it.
- Patrick Hammer
A Dozen Poets
(for David Elsasser)
A dozen poets gathered in Central Park
for an Open Reading and a pop-up Book
Launch for a colleague who supplied
folding chairs, read, and sold his books.
We were on a gentle hill under
a tree, just in from Central Park West,
between an AA meeting and a birthday
party where the boys tried to steal our chairs.
We made sure to occupy them all
and listen to our host using a mic
meant for karaoke but it did the trick
if you listened intently under the falling leaves.
Police on horseback soon appeared
and singled us out among all
the other gatherings on this incline.
They asked to see our permit. We had none.
Tempers flared and harsh words flew
when they told us to disperse. We would
not go down off the hill so easily.
They persisted; we grew angrier.
No! we cried, we will not go gentle.
Never, no way, we will not yield.
No poets: no drums. No writers:
no trumpets announcing our news.
We began to recite from memory
the truths of Whitman and Plath,
the revelations of Rimbaud and the language
of Adrienne Rich and Langston Hughes, Ginsberg.
The cops sat dumbfounded. Their horses
shook their heads and neighed in agreement
with us. We hurled haikus at the cops,
spit out images, catapulted metaphors.
They sat in shock. They called us
Crazy Bastards—and moved on.
- Patrick Hammer