Ithaca 1960
No, we didn’t let go buck naked
off a rope over a fishing hole, whooping
like Tarzan, somersaulting cannonballs
to explode a pond and sink fetal into its murk
still pinching noses like the freckled boys-
being-boys in the barber shop calendar
under the mirror next to a speckled fly tape
dripping in amber curlicues over jars
of cloying creams and drowned combs,
watching Ray the barber buzz our heads,
waiting for him to rail against communists
so we could tell him we were commies,
homos, part negro, and we’d be glad
if the wrestling team lost every match,
which was, in fact, by accident the truth,
not because bigotry outraged us,
but because ashes from the cigarette
dangling from his squinting sneer
kept falling onto the apron dusty
with our sheared stubble, for we were no
hippies but townies who dove
from high shale ledges into black pools
pocketing ancient gorges, or we trudged
through cinders down tracks
shimmering with hopeless chimeras,
stinking of creosote and skunk weed,
to clamber over smashed cement block
into the cold lake wearing ragged cut-offs
we worked in, pushing a wheelbarrow
clattering with rakes down Snob Hill
sidewalks, shouting up to white gables
Bring out your dead, sweltering in sweat
only long enough to buy a night’s wine
we drank with girls whose long straight hair
whipped back in circles as they bubbled
the jug and whose eyes flashed warnings
in leaping firelight.
off a rope over a fishing hole, whooping
like Tarzan, somersaulting cannonballs
to explode a pond and sink fetal into its murk
still pinching noses like the freckled boys-
being-boys in the barber shop calendar
under the mirror next to a speckled fly tape
dripping in amber curlicues over jars
of cloying creams and drowned combs,
watching Ray the barber buzz our heads,
waiting for him to rail against communists
so we could tell him we were commies,
homos, part negro, and we’d be glad
if the wrestling team lost every match,
which was, in fact, by accident the truth,
not because bigotry outraged us,
but because ashes from the cigarette
dangling from his squinting sneer
kept falling onto the apron dusty
with our sheared stubble, for we were no
hippies but townies who dove
from high shale ledges into black pools
pocketing ancient gorges, or we trudged
through cinders down tracks
shimmering with hopeless chimeras,
stinking of creosote and skunk weed,
to clamber over smashed cement block
into the cold lake wearing ragged cut-offs
we worked in, pushing a wheelbarrow
clattering with rakes down Snob Hill
sidewalks, shouting up to white gables
Bring out your dead, sweltering in sweat
only long enough to buy a night’s wine
we drank with girls whose long straight hair
whipped back in circles as they bubbled
the jug and whose eyes flashed warnings
in leaping firelight.
