Junkers
“In Yonkahs” a drunk Cornell fratboy
slurred to us townies atop a picnic table
in the Royal Palms Bar, one in a long row
like at Oktoberfest, “we got culchuh up
to heah.” He’d propped a stiff hand
beneath his chin like some Aryan salute
Nazis greet each other by out of prison,
or how beef-faced Bismarck forked his hand
around his meaty neck like a noose
in smirking answer to a wife begging
for her husband’s life. Though none of us
then thought such thoughts in carefree years
hoisting pitchers of urinous beer. To us
a junker meant a brawny brute tramping
along rows of wreckage fisting a wrench
with a sodden cigar stub clamped in his teeth
to gut a dead car sunk tire-deep in weeds,
nor did we drunks know any junkies.
We knew nothing of Prussian muck-a-
mucks always clicking boot heels and jerking
backs straight up to salute ladies
making chest lettuce shake and jingle
and then dangle as they bent their waists
ninety degrees to kiss proffered fingers,
monocles slipping off lizard-lidded eyes
to display dueling scars, precisely parallel
precursors for twin bolts of SS lightning.
Iunctus, bulrushes braided into rope
rotting to tea in bilge that sloshed the feet
of slaves rowing a Roman galley. “We’re junk,”
we jeered “with culchah down to heah,”
clutching our crotches. All-American mutts
we were when we only had one hyphen
to say it all.
slurred to us townies atop a picnic table
in the Royal Palms Bar, one in a long row
like at Oktoberfest, “we got culchuh up
to heah.” He’d propped a stiff hand
beneath his chin like some Aryan salute
Nazis greet each other by out of prison,
or how beef-faced Bismarck forked his hand
around his meaty neck like a noose
in smirking answer to a wife begging
for her husband’s life. Though none of us
then thought such thoughts in carefree years
hoisting pitchers of urinous beer. To us
a junker meant a brawny brute tramping
along rows of wreckage fisting a wrench
with a sodden cigar stub clamped in his teeth
to gut a dead car sunk tire-deep in weeds,
nor did we drunks know any junkies.
We knew nothing of Prussian muck-a-
mucks always clicking boot heels and jerking
backs straight up to salute ladies
making chest lettuce shake and jingle
and then dangle as they bent their waists
ninety degrees to kiss proffered fingers,
monocles slipping off lizard-lidded eyes
to display dueling scars, precisely parallel
precursors for twin bolts of SS lightning.
Iunctus, bulrushes braided into rope
rotting to tea in bilge that sloshed the feet
of slaves rowing a Roman galley. “We’re junk,”
we jeered “with culchah down to heah,”
clutching our crotches. All-American mutts
we were when we only had one hyphen
to say it all.
