Here I am at 7:06 PM standing on line outside the Poetry Project
It’s a mild October evening barely crisp enough for a leather jacket
over a Keith Richards shirt
Doors at 7:30, line stretches around corners, I need a front row seat
I don’t always hear so well these days
We are celebrating Eileen Myles I remember taking her book home
from the Neither/Nor Bookstore on 6th Street, entranced
by her handsome tomboyness,
her white shirt rolled to the elbows,
her jeans so ripped and faded you could feel the softness
The slight hint of a mullet in a Ramones sort of way, arms crossed
yet still approachable and on the back cover in that same shirt
lighting a cigarette,
Budweiser and pack of Marlboros on the desk,
brick walls and a typewriter, yes, a typewriter and
I don’t remember whether I ever paid Rick for the book, probably not
After all, it was 1981 and I never paid for anything and it strikes me
that few of the chattering girls around me were alive in 1981
I don’t remember much about 1981 but I do remember a typewriter
on a kitchen table and I remember Bimbo Rivas and Pedro Pietri
shouting poems in the street but maybe I don’t remember
Maybe I don’t remember if I was really there or thought I must have
been there because I must have been somewhere, isn’t
everyone? Always?
Here I am at 7:18 PM and the line stretches around two corners
I’m pretty sure I am where I stand and
not somebody else I used to know
as the girls chatter and the boys shuffle their feet
All of the girls are pretty but aren’t all young girls pretty?
Was I? Or was I somebody else even then?
I can’t see him but I’m sure Pedro’s long coat touched the ground
when he stooped down to catch that last can of beer
as it rolled from the brown paper bag
I remember the poet’s young sisters laughing as they recalled
Bimbo’s voice so loud in the park he shook the trees
Maybe it was a night I wasn’t there. I was somewhere, but I can still
see the bandshell where the homeless slept, where my daughter
learned to climb stairs but it’s not there any more and neither
are Bimbo or Pedro or the poet with the laughing sisters
But somehow I am, without reason or a hat, I am
And here I am, it’s 7:27 PM outside the St. Mark’s Church
In three minutes doors will open and several hours from now
the doors will close
I’ll leave by myself, remaining who I am, walk down Second Avenue
across Seventh Street, past the park, and two, no three,
places I’ve lived
Past the invisible bandshell, and the silent voices of grown children
Here I am, it is 7:30 PM and the line moves and we start to advance
just a little bit, just a little bit, we move forward |