Days of 1981
After James Merrill
Before the fatted calf were the feats of the Prodigal Son,
who returned wealthier than when he had left;
whose wisdom and new friends earned him
his father’s gratitude, and a steak.
1.
Auspicious start: Iran hostages released,
Nancy in red, my first trip to Paris.
An innocent girl married a prince that summer,
celebrated worldwide, a first via satellite.
Good son, good job, good friends, good times
(And times were getting juicy,
too tangy for the weekly call home.)
I remember being twenty-five and out on my own.
I remember my LA boyfriend red-eyed for breakfast.
I remember the foldout couch notching the floor
after long nights at St. Mark’s Baths, where I overheard:
“Before my last piano recital, I was here all night.
They had to set me on the bench and
carry me onstage. But I played beautifully.”
I remember Reagan getting shot, his trickle down,
his breaking the air traffic controllers’ union,
his first strikes against my middle class.
I stepped out into ostracized backstreets and saw.
I moved to a Chelsea SRO. Through the second
bathroom door, another roach-skittered linoleum floor,
where adjoined a drug-addled has-been actress.
We barbecued in the garden while upstairs
a man beat his girlfriend. A roach on the wall
at the China-Latina (“Is that yours?” “No, mine
are all at home.”) led to my first three-way
with the next table. Elsie Chelsea, darling.
Business travel. I fled the roaches but not
the fast life. In Duluth I rushed at lunch to a clinic
for a cure to the clap I‘d caught from a guy who
looked like Robert Redford with a rolling belly.
I sat in my Brooks Brothers suit among the mommies
and babies. I kept my sleaze tailored. My native
Midwest grew alien, accents cracking my ears.
I yearned for Jewfros and Soho fern bars.
2.
Somehow, the actress stole a bike off a boy in the projects.
They came for her. Twenty white kids stormed the house.
I charged into the pack of raging teens pounding
the door and got pounded to the bottom of the stoop.
My black eyes, cut mouth salved by a doobie
from friends, the next night I played the zombie
at the swank penthouse party of Stanford interns.
At the bank cashing my paycheck—my boss’s glance.
Then, Greenwich Village proper, a listing in the Voice:
Seville Studios. The viewing was mobbed.
The toilet flushed so I took it. Fewer roaches,
only one door to the bathroom. Julius nearby.
Two Jim’s drank beers at the bar. Each tried
out my couch, the foreplay of friendship.
Weeks later, one then the other dissolved into walking
skeletons and disappeared. It was beginning.
My Fiesta bowl brimmed with the cards
of tricks, any of whom might be my last.
Yet not to collect them was not to live.
I had waited a quarter-century for this.
There were Doug and Larry I’d met at the Baths.
They took adjoining rooms and played all night.
They taught me cut flowers are best embalmed
in cold water. Crystal vase of aspirations.
Gene from Chicago had to have sex every day.
I covered a few slots in his calendar. Banker Joe,
we couldn’t be alone together without sex.
John broke my heart by not returning my calls.
Then there he was, at a gallery opening,
in a wheelchair. Hard even to say hi.
It was happening.
I lit a cigarette, my new vice.
Everyone named here is now gone.
3.
Back at Seville Studios, the bipolar on the ground floor
burst into the street one Sunday morning, screaming,
hurling LPs. Next night, smoke seeped
up the rickety stairs from the fire he’d set.
Three weeks in London not knowing if my apartment
would be unburned on my return. False alarm.
To the baths. I fucked a boy four times in an hour.
He thought he’d gone to heaven. I was home.
My parents never heard about any of this
from their Prodigal they thought not
a prodigal at all. Secrets cast shade
in dark corners, sheltered the tread on the stairs.
Their strange comfort was all I could count on.
Juggling, juggling. Can’t drop. Can’t stop.
I remember Armistice Day, Westminster Abbey,
ancient Great War vets, tears to their poppies.
They shuffled past memorials to their fallen legions.
Where have all the flowers gone? sang Marlene,
Will we ever learn: Ron and Nancy unleashed a new
nuclear ordeal. Millions were marching. In DC, I
dined with the new functionaries plotting rightwing
conspiracies that would pale today. That had begun.
I went home for Christmas, tight-lipped, aloof,
my secrets a silent chorus in every conversation.
What would they think? Say–? If they knew–?
I cast perhaps a last look at Mom’s tree ornaments.
It took two tries for my return flight
to lift off from the slushy runway.
Free again, I lit my first cigarette
in a week. Smoke was now my air.
I remember Buckingham Palace, the newlyweds
Charles and Di, leaving in a Mini, an Odyssey of glamour.
Memory layers with time: Diana’s eyes—jewels
into that future? We were both ready to launch.
Bruce E. Whitacre’s debut collection, The Elk in the Glade: The World of Pioneer and Painter Jennie Hicks, was a BookLife Reviews Editors Pick and Indy Spotlight. It also placed 2nd in Contemporary Poetry at The BookFest Spring 2023 and was a Finalist in Narrative Poetry in the American BookFest Best Book Awards 2023. Publications include The American Journal of Poetry, World Literature Today, Life and Legends, The Mandarin, Nine Cloud Journal. Published in anthologies from Southern Arizona Press (Castles and Courtyards, 2023, and The Wonders of Winter, 2022) and Milk and Cake Press (I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe, 2021). “Leave Meeting” was a sample poem in Diane Lockward’s craft book, The Strategic Poet, Terrapin Books, 2021. He has garnished nominations for Pushcart and Best of the Net. Good Housekeeping is forthcoming in 2024 from Poets Wear Prada. A retired theatre executive, he lives with his husband in Queens, NY.
The Marbled Sigh 