A New York Lust Trip
Thomas Bacher
I ride in cabs
with their own stories,
their tales of two
citizens giving
drivers directions to a lover’s house or another way of saying
“naked” is cross-referenced with “meter running”
wild.
I pointed out Flatbush Avenue
but you kept my head
on your breast a nice firm rosy
wonderland
until we ended it at Nathan’s on Coney Island
with a dozen
shelled cherrystones dripping
for excuses.” If only” we said.
If only we were even younger, if only we had never met
the other or see “Buber, Ich und du” in the index.
We crawled like yellow bellies,
our soft shells
snarled in traffic on the Verrazano Narrows.
Jersey’s red night sky foretelling
your ferry ride
with some
scotch-drenched sailor,
French ticklers in his pocket,
his hands under your blouse. I think I bought it at Sak’s, maybe Goodwill
or never purchased
what you wanted.
You found a lamp with an Eiffel tower
base in some second hand store on Chambers Street,
asked me run away with it
and you. It was as close as we got to Paris in
the springtime except
when you rolled me up in a blanket and left me
with Being and Nothingness.
We groped cheaply on a bus ride
to brie-eating PhDs and prep-school
cheerleaders outfitted to
the rhythms of your parent’s
Weston home. You footnoted it for me
Highlighted MD, underscored
partner as my invitation. Walking the Bichon
made me ill.
One night we took a sinister car service to get
Jeter’s autograph and hit smack
sellers on the Grand Concourse. You tipped the driver
and left me lying on the sidewalk
but came back with $100 stuck
in the backseat crevice
and gave the driver $50
for a $10 ride to the nearest OTB.
I took a flyer on a 25-1 claimer in the fifth.
Thomas Bacher
I ride in cabs
with their own stories,
their tales of two
citizens giving
drivers directions to a lover’s house or another way of saying
“naked” is cross-referenced with “meter running”
wild.
I pointed out Flatbush Avenue
but you kept my head
on your breast a nice firm rosy
wonderland
until we ended it at Nathan’s on Coney Island
with a dozen
shelled cherrystones dripping
for excuses.” If only” we said.
If only we were even younger, if only we had never met
the other or see “Buber, Ich und du” in the index.
We crawled like yellow bellies,
our soft shells
snarled in traffic on the Verrazano Narrows.
Jersey’s red night sky foretelling
your ferry ride
with some
scotch-drenched sailor,
French ticklers in his pocket,
his hands under your blouse. I think I bought it at Sak’s, maybe Goodwill
or never purchased
what you wanted.
You found a lamp with an Eiffel tower
base in some second hand store on Chambers Street,
asked me run away with it
and you. It was as close as we got to Paris in
the springtime except
when you rolled me up in a blanket and left me
with Being and Nothingness.
We groped cheaply on a bus ride
to brie-eating PhDs and prep-school
cheerleaders outfitted to
the rhythms of your parent’s
Weston home. You footnoted it for me
Highlighted MD, underscored
partner as my invitation. Walking the Bichon
made me ill.
One night we took a sinister car service to get
Jeter’s autograph and hit smack
sellers on the Grand Concourse. You tipped the driver
and left me lying on the sidewalk
but came back with $100 stuck
in the backseat crevice
and gave the driver $50
for a $10 ride to the nearest OTB.
I took a flyer on a 25-1 claimer in the fifth.
