Single White Male
Into
drive-ins, tight sweaters, old biker movies,
good Chinese take-out, Thai coffee, roller
coasters,
library archives, cattail marshes, ballroom
dancing.
Prefers Anna
Karenina with a corvette, tempted by
high-speed finger-fucking on interstates at
rush
hour. No machinists. Welders, ok.
Understands how
despair was a blessing for Elijah. If you
could
perform unnecessary root canal on any
celebrity,
who would you choose? Likes the story
about the
football game between the Insects & the Mammals,
&
how the Mammals were winning until
Centipede joined
the Insects late in the second half, &
how all the
reporters gathered around Centipede after the
game
to ask him what took so long, & how
Centipede answered
because he had to tape his ankles. Isn’t
scared of
Bob the Wasp.
Enjoys reading Dr. Seuss. People aren’t
thinking for themselves. People have not been
thinking
for themselves for a while now. Rice
artichokes
spinach black beans lemonade cinnamon roll
potato chips ginseng root miso
tempeh french fries
macaroni & cheese Pace. Knows the timeless
beat of
frog in the cold coffee cups of janitors
asleep in
boiler rooms. Does not have the hips of a
twelve-year-old boy. Is at home in the orbit swept
clean by Mercury as that swept clean by
Pluto. Sex
near childbirth find. Exhortation is your
gift, even
if you seek nothing other than refuge
from the “Bandits
of hope and fear.” I’m not Goldfinger. And how come
you don’t know who you are? Is it speech
is too slow?
That it takes
too long to express? Because something
inside is broken? Because
somebody broke it? Because
you don’t remember what was broken?
Because you are
spirit and the universe is also spirit? You
still
get carded. Remember how to diagram a
sentence. Can
chop an onion. Bury a child. Would rather
give and
receive. Dresses up in blue on Saturday night.
Sees
the present as an explosion that literally
blows the
paint off your masterpiece. Makes love below sea-level,
above 12,000 feet, amidst salt-water tears,
cragged
peaks. Will give out the telephone number
for the tiny
booth under the flickering light of her
unlisted heart.
24 May 1993
[Published in Grasslands.
© 1994 by Jim
Cohn.]
