Volume 16 ~ Spring 2004 ~ ISSN 1543-6063

BILL KUSHNER

SHAKER

It happened again. On the way out, oh
just one simple walk before bed time, a
check of the moon to make sure it was
still up there, yeah, doing its ha-ha job.

That quick, awful shaking in him, then
a slow come to rest. Once again, he
said it, aloud, "It's the world, that old
fucker, the world," and he let it go.

His pale cheeks were lightly rouged.
A white carnation in his dark hair, "that's
for remembrance," he whispered to him-
self, pushing open the door, letting in

The streets, "Stop shaking, shaker!"
Streets of moon and shadows, of restless
men like him, of angry men like him, re-
membering again those streets over there,
and him on patrol, gun cocked, aim, fire.

For any day now, he'd be off to Alaska,
that clean ice white world, "Yeah, as
close to spotless as it gets. Maybe
still some gold left for this poor soldier."

Passing a dark form whose eyes stared
back, he careened to a stop. "I hear
Alaska singing," he said to the man, the
man cloaked in camouflaged, head to boot.

"Do you hear it, too?" The man sort of
smiled, shifting this way, that way, then
looking around, then quickly nodding.
"Yeah, Babe, I hear it too," baring his
sharp teeth. "You got someplace to go?"

US

She was me, awful shy, retiring dreamy.
We was us, sitting alongside the rocky
road leading to the mountain where
all the moony wolves wait, dreaming
of love. For what does a woman
like us need? oh perhaps a man, a man
like us, red as one single radish, a pretty
radish as plump as a Buddha, there be-
tween our legs. There we shall meet, we
dream, between two all night fish stands,
like 2 squealing amorous cats, howling
our unnamable hunger, but what part eat
first? where to even start? Hot love,
when it comes, just happens. You, me,
us, standing up stark naked, round and
resplendent, when a tap on our shoulder
makes us turn about, and there stands,
pants down, love, looking like a jackal
our love looks, knock knock, who's there?
It's love, lovely as sin, hurry, let me in.
One long night with one passionate
jackal, that's all we ask for and all we
get. In the morning, the fog like come
on our hair and skin, we lick love away,
even as the jealous birds in a chorus
above us, fly down to peck at our cheeks,
even as, gaily laughing, we stop to gather
great armfuls of cherries, and all for she,
she who is the we of us, bursting ripe and
ready, for our breakfasts of red.

W

Some people are weeping some
woozy on a Prince. That guy needs
a shave bad grates against me, so I
turn facing backwards, see I can
write this & move my head down
pretend sucking his cock words

Well so you leave a home here to
stand upside down writing a poem dear
queer upon a train ride to Brooklyn
the moon. A W train a B man astride me
he makes awful pictures, we racing
on ledges fighting death & evil, he's
the very Devil hurling bricks bats at us
we repel with Sis & I our loveliest smiles

Is he dancing as if he has to? Is
she part of the plot too? A man
in a cowboy tips his hot hat says
Pardon me, Kid, lifts his log around
my mouth's head so I sniff you, grass

That I keep madly thinkings Oh he's
the guy who repairs my plumbings he
scratched & said "use it to your heart's
content." That night we went to bed I
kept thinking his tough voice was of the
way lost conductor of this W train to the
end of the line in Brooklyn my mind
where them they are holding my sister
in contempt of her mental "uh problems"
says she just wants to die. "Don't you
understand?" bad dream says, "if she dies,
why, you do, too?" I wake, run quick, pee

For she was my sister, pure red as a
Rose & 8 years my older & oh I loved
her & her in her black bra & a sneak I
peeked & her great heaving breasts &
something forbidden in I gulped I
oh barely touched it & oh I was born
prick I was born 1931 hard heart of de-
pression the loveliest child & when she
married her him fucking World War 2
how I felt got abandoned when 2 people
sleep with each other do they then go to
sleep faster & do they then get up earlier
than God to hear the birds sing tra-la?

You fucking World War 2, I collected
aluminum stuff off of cigarette you know
packs collected string collected stamps
from wherever he mailed them to her to
send a salami to your boy in the army
& he wrote her these letters I sneaked I
read in the darknesses of our hearts they

Were letters yeah to me of her my lovely
& when I found me a drawer of his jock-
straps oh why so many many? as if he'd
all these pricks not just one like one like
me & I put one on oh see me but a loveliest
boy of 13 & on one by one oh see me in
them all on me I was 1944 & I was creepy
I me strutting before her mirror & 8 jock-
straps on naked sweaty jerkoffy lovely

We kiss, sit, silence, hold hands, she walks
with a cane now, body bent with arthritis,
her hair my snow white. 80. & I'm still in
most loveliest love with my lovely old rose.
I look around, surprised, so many young, why
so many? they staring out at nothing, dazed

Suddenly, all whispery, as if ssh it's
a secret, so's I have to bend face close
to hear her, she starts to tell me when
she was 17 and looking for her first job
in the world "so's to help out at home.
you know.at home.mama and papa.
but those times.bad times.bad.
so many us girls.begging, begging.
every place I went.but no jobs, none."

Later, riding back, much later, back on
creaky old W train, back to where in
whatever the hot hell he came from,
he noticed that her bright blond hair
had trembled, ever so slightly, raging
into that dark night, as they both
zoomed up, & her tight in his arms.
"Time to save the world again, love,"
he whispered into those pearl ears.
She nods: "Let's go. Yes!" I'm sitting

Under train's map, as we rumble on
back, one hopes, to old Manhattan
and eventually to somewhere home.
Young Chinese man comes, bends
he, to stare at it, his face almost in
my face. "Where you want to go?" I
finally ask. He shakes head no, as if

He doesn't understand me, words,
English, yet he keeps bent, staring,
trying to figure it out, as if that map
was the map of the world, and him
all lost in it, alone. I turn to find &
to trace the route of this fucking train
with my fucking finger, and he nods,
shakes head. I trace the map of the
wide world with my finger, and his
sweet face nods, smiles, excited, in a yes.

Poems © Bill Kushner 2004. All rights reserved.

Duncan Hannah
www.jamesgrahamandsons.com

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