Song of a Reformed Headhunter

His words desert him this morning for downtown Manhattan, carrying briefcases, newspapers and coffee. They do not speak to each other. They’re thinking of memos, faxes and phonecalls. They do not look at him, a Chinese wetback waiting to be picked for a day’s work. Tiny jaws gnaw at him and he wants Matt. The spotted knapweed migrates fast, decimating the bluebunch wheat grass. You can identify it by its pink blooms in black-mottled bracts on stem tips. He hurries past fat black women prodding snappers which gape on beds of ice, past the row of crones blistering next to their red talismans and I-Ching hexagrams, their faces cracked like parched ground, past the old men hunched over their paper chessboards, rolling a cannon across the river or retreating an elephant. Small populations can be uprooted by digging and pulling. If they’re established, spray Picloram at point five pounds per acre when the plant is a bud. He passes a boy practicing a Yao Ming hookshot seen on TV, two young me...

This is not a lunch poem. It’s an after lunch poem. I can write this ‘cause I’m jobless. In fact, I have the whole day to myself. So there! This morning, I rode the 6 train to Lex for an interview with the School Head. She’s the first African-American Head. I don’t remember what I said but I think she likes me. I like her too. Then I had a vegetarian sandwich with grilled peppers, dijon and Fontina and made eyes at the curly-haired Latino behind the till. He looked away. I cruised the park to say HI! to the gulls. Call coming in (stops writing) ... It was the Head. I’ve got a job waiting.

When angry men made rough rocks beautiful in Florence or some place where they found work, they didn’t instruct pupils like a petty clerk nor inspect hack-hewn stones with a plumb rule. The teachers sought in future’s Istanbul Byzantium built into the marble’s quirk, and molded to the forms of Greeks and Turks the breathing figure sat on bed or stool. I refuse to spend my best and brightest hour correcting this boy’s grammar, that girl’s heart, coruscating like plastic when they shine. If I’m the model, then let them devour my passion for highlighting into art this girl’s clothed breasts, that boy’s vigorous line. * this sonnet begins with the last line in a Paul Goodman sonnet.

He does not want our change but wants our souls, this black man begging in the crowded train, warning of God’s wrath, fire, tears and pain in a voice straight and steely as this pole. What gives him the right to stand and tell this herd, who’s not his flock, they’ll go to hell? A flare is tripped; I want to swing and whack his jaw. I don’t because the others will frown, because you don’t kick a man when he is down, and down is what I often think of black. I hate the weak who try hard to be strong. The really strong I can face and attack but from the weak, so greedy for right and wrong, so sure of what they deserve, I hold back. * I am reading as one of four features at the Cornelia Street Cafe. It'd be lovely to see you there if you can make it. I hope to read some new poems too. Date: April 23 (Sun) Time: 6 - 8 p.m. Place: Cornelia Street Cafe (link below) Admission: $6 (includes one drink) No open mike. http://www.corneliastreetcafe.com/

Come on, straight boy, and make gay love with me. One day of loving will not make you queer, if queer is what you will not bend to be. Loving men is but a change of gears. Why settle for a girl, an undulating waterbed, and stress leaks pinched too late? Why with an oven she loves regulating, you stick your tray of cookies in, and wait? Men love themselves when they love other men. Loving themselves, they know well how to give each other head, maneuver two or ten round the bend of straightforward relief. What have you got to lose? Leap, acrobat! You can still fall back on pussy-cat.

Lend me three hundred certainties, Mister Death. In cash. You’ll have it back on my payday, and whatever interest levied. By my breath, I need the loan right now to make my way. My boyfriend does not want me to move in yet. I’m leaving school without a job. My visa is expiring. I begin again a sonnet when the brain’s a throb. Last Saturday, the Berkeley economist spoke of the lenders jacking up their stalls and interest rates for those desperate or pissed, scuffing or sleeping in poverty’s malls. He explained to me how it’s irrational to borrow from death in order to subsist.

At night my body woke and roamed the sum of streets. Behind shop windows, old men aged defending countertops and daily waged fathers hunched over woks. The streets were dumb. Inside a bar, young gods swallowed their rum and coke, working sweet mouths, throats, barely caged in filled-out shirts. I sat alone, loved, raged until I heard Cavafy whisper “Come this way.” Then I felt like Xerxes when a low Hellene revealed the local thoroughfare; or like a shy suitor who turned to go but recognized the stranger on the stair and followed. In his room, he held me—Oh! relieved me of myself, wet underwear.

We started wrongly: you surfed the Net and loved an early poem in a style so crude I blushed and stripped it down to a glowing nude but you prefer the body shod and gloved. You see more than I do. How you approved, as I read Proust out loud, of the French prude who blurred the window when his women screwed each other; how you were visibly moved. Last night I read to a responsive crowd but had eyes only for where you stood and then for the train window, still too proud to ask. You answered in bed, it sounded good. Sounded! We started wrongly when we vowed candor we walk into and do not crack.

My poem, "Mermen," has been published in Softblow , a poetry journal edited by Cyril Wong, based in Singapore. Check it out! The journal is a good read.

May good flowers always bloom for you and good fortune always be yours too. The red paper pocket my parents sent presents six crisp one-hundred dollar bills they can't afford but will still send until I'm married or dead. Needing every cent to pay the cost of New York City's rent while ambition hustles to fulfill itself, I don't swindle or steal or kill but pocket the greenbacks and their intent. I think of Hart Crane, strongly doubtful, bent on being a writer, dining on goodwill, swallowing pride, yes, like a bitter pill and plucking the roses the rich soil lent. * I am reading as one of three features at the Cornelia Street Cafe. It'd be lovely to see you there if you can make it. I hope to read some new poems too. Date: April 23 (Sun) Time: 6 - 8 p.m. Place: Cornelia Street Cafe (link below) Admission: $6 (includes one drink) No open mike. http://www.corneliastreetcafe.com/

How do I write for these? The student sniped and the shot’s ricocheting in the school when I return to them their stories typed to fit what we have taught are fiction’s rules. I am well-trained and train my students well to distinguish good from bad and right from wrong and friend from foe as if it’s easy to tell to which embattled camp each thing belongs. I am well-trained to devastate dissent, cut off supply lines, dig in or delay the enemy, which is why I resent the sniping of my competence that day. How should I write for these when my desire, Goodman, is to return fire for fire?

My Kyrgyz classmate, after the revolution, spoke of his government’s overthrow known to none of us. Either it was not shown on TV or clashed with makeover solutions. In a Bel-Air suite, regretting her resolution, a woman has her thighs sucked thin as bones, face broken in and reconstructed, breasts blown to a choice of Ds, endured as absolution. When she goes home, what does the Head of State, freshly installed, tell her? What ritual bull do the new priests sacrifice? The bureaucrats will do as bureaucrats do. When the wool is snatched from her eyes, as the audience waits, she feels her face, Oh my god! I’m beautiful.