THE WINTRY QUEAN


I watch her

from the shadowed edge of an alley
crowded with empty loading docks from
which I have just emerged on my way
to my favorite old geezer's bar

to drink in the New Year with one time
party boys wearing hard earned wrinkles
and the bad old girls who helped to
put them there

I watch her

from the cover of an ancient brick wall
sagging over me like my blind Aunt Rosie
looking for her cane but finding only
her nephew's hand

I watch her

the streetlamps defining her stage
between the dirty gutter snow and
the storefronts' locked steel gates

holding forth to any stray audience on
a corner sporting a closed up pharmacy
and a closed forever lunch counter

advertising authentic New York Egg Creams
which as any New Yorker will proclaim
contain no eggs and no cream

I watch her

nervously bouncing frostbitten knees on
five-inch lipstick red stiletto heels
glued to the sidewalk ice

her legs threaded with rangy muscle
and the beginnings of varicose veins
from a career spent more on her feet
than on her back

her slender buttocks slipping in and out
from under her banana colored hotpants
like a shy child playing peekaboo

her rabbit pretending to be chinchilla
pretending to be mink coat wrapped
around her tiny ribcage and breasts

her aluminum disco chain belt
chiming through the thin air
of first winter

Yes I watch her

my mouth dry from hiking up from
the Battery to the Lower East Side
to find myself pausing at this corner
which I must either pass or detour
all the way around to Broadway

Cherisse rarely ranges
this far downtown
business must be bad

Last night the Son of Sam shot up
another couple necking in their car
and will undoubtedly mail another
preening letter to Jimmy Breslin
whose preening newspaper will
undoubtedly quote it and

even though this sort of thing
doesn't yet happen every night
(after all this is still the 70's)
the lovers and would be lovers and
make believe lovers of New York
are staying home tonight 

except for Cherisse
except for me
and we are not lovers
are not even on speaking terms

Still I watch her

waving to some passing teenage boys
wearing padded fake leather jackets
over swaggering shoulders and
wispy cobwebs above their lips and
who are the only pedestrians in sight

Poor boys

they must have drunk a bit too much
for two of them accidentally let
their beer cans slip from their hands
and a gust of wind must have sent them
to fall bubbling against her shoes

Polite boys too

how they gather around her to apologize
and wipe the beer from her shoes
her shins
her shivering thighs

She tries to negotiate a deal
but they only want to browse
then she shouts at them but
they like the sound of a doll that
cries Mama when you squeeze it

I count seven of them
maybe high school football players
the kind whose coaches make them
purposely flunk their Senior finals
just for an extra year of glory

I stopped carrying my hunting knife
when I hit the City because
New York cops don't like knives
and I don't like New York cops

but I don't like doing nothing either
especially when my inner cowardice or
self preservation or common sense
keeps me rooted to this safe little

guard shack because I don't want to
get killed I don't want her to see me
get killed to thank me for getting
killed to think of me getting killed

to keep doing this shit to herself
until one night when she's alone and
her pimp is off spending her money and
she turns the wrong trick and relieves
me of the burden of not getting killed

Quiet as the empty docks I feel
my way backwards past a dumpster
to a pile of wooden pallets

As the fringe on my deerskin coat
rustles against something sticky
I pull off a sturdy one-by-four

Swinging my arm high overhead I bring
the club down hard against the dumpster
banging wood to steel over and over
with no words no script no sense at all

just the hard echoing slap of
Somebody's Watching You echoing
out of a dark alley behind their
clean suburban backs

They spin around whispering
what the fuck was that
how the fuck should I know
then one of them shouts
hey who the fuck are you

I say nothing but keep banging away
thinking what the fuck should I do now

One of them

a stocky boy turns back to Cherisse
and freezes in place staring at
one set of fingernails extended like
the claws of a wounded alley cat

the other pulled back in a fist with
something shiny sticking out of it
her eyes shot open and hot and
looking as mad as an angry whore 

But what else should we expect

Then nothing
I say nothing
Cherisse says nothing
The boys say nothing

I start moving forward

Suddenly the stocky boy shoves
a careless hand into her chest
and she falls to the sidewalk
and they stroll away laughing

Cherisse sits alone for a long minute
breathing hard and shaking and staring
right into my alley while I just watch
from the shadows like some damn pimp
waiting for her to score

Then she picks herself up
stomps the sidewalk
breaks off a heel
curses and limps away

The next day I read in the paper about
a group of teenagers from New Jersey
who went on a rampage in the Village
looking for girls and beating up gays

until the off-duty security chief
of the local nuclear power plant
chased them off with his pistol and
then a Port Authority cop finally

cornered them at a train station on
their way back to hearth and home
after which they were booked printed
and shown flashing grins on the TV news

But for now

after another long minute alone
I break my one by four across
the dumpster and resume my course
to my favorite old geezer bar

where I drink screwdrivers until
closing while the gentleman friend
of a fine old gal whom I once
tried to pick up regales me with

how they consummated their love
on an Arizona sand dune without
benefit of preacher or book
twenty-seven glorious years ago

and how they have danced together
through decades of desert romances
and golden Spanish nights and
old city lights

until even the bartender envies
these hazy lovers staring into
one another's hazy eyes and
skipping the pickup lines and
cheap alibis for a silent language

born of sipping unfashionable drinks
and dancing to their private songs
and laughing their way to Last Call

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This poem is from On Pagan Roads Copyright © 2004 David Arv Bragi