Some things happened so long ago, it’s hard to tell
real from dream, like that time it rains and the tomboy from Sunberry Street busts
the rusty lock on a green door under an abandoned house on her street and we find baskets
full of costume jewelry which to seven-year-olds is a lifetime
supply of glamor and I bring my half to the basement and sort the little fakes into color
piles, ruby, amber, emerald, sapphire, which I pack away neatly under a cowboy
hat on my father’s plywood shelves, but next day, the jewels are gone. Robbed. The world’s
a cruel place, but while I am down there, I spy dad’s Playboy calendar, tan Miss July
hangs by a nail, splayed on a bed, white garters and knee socks and nothing else
making a face that says, you’re a funny sort of man, says, I like playing with this patch of fuzz
as much as you miss what’s been stolen, and for some reason I open the brown door
beside her and stand back where I can see her ankles spread wide
and out the door a steady stream of cars on Putnam Pike but they can’t see me
pull down my pants to show her my nakedness too, hands on hips like I’m willing to wait
five years for her beckoning to be real because I’m too young for even those prepubescent
erections. Some things happened so long ago, it’s hard
to tell real from dream, like when I move into the bartender’s house I’ve been seeing and we
own two of everything so my big brass bed stays in the kitchen covered with a red and gold
comforter and one night, the middle of winter, an old girlfriend of mine comes to drink
all the bartender’s whiskey and she jumps on the kitchen bed and folds that comforter
over her shoulders and tries to look seductive. We think she’ll never leave
and he threatens to call the cops. Another night his favorite woman
friend comes in the height of a heat wave and we grill up fish, they smoke at the patio table,
play cards, and she gives me a hard look that says, you’re too young for him, says,
you won’t be here long, and she drinks till her eyes twitch and she leaves with her blouse
half-unbuttoned and one hand messing her hair and after that he takes me
to the bedroom bed with two tumblers of whiskey—he always has extra
hidden somewhere—and he rolls over into a mounting pose and the grill’s still full
of hot embers. We leave the door open to hear the city’s tires roll on summer asphalt.
Let the whole damn city hear us too, two grown men become
buffalo, an hour of late-night urban buck and grunt.
***
Read more of Anthony DiPietro’s poetry.
Interested in submitting poetry to The Good Men Project? Check out our guidelines.
Photo by leigh49137/Flickr