Colette Inez
STALKING ee IN THE FIFTIES
I knew him by his tonsure,
head bare as a Buddhist monk
or a bowl holding lower case lettersthat poured out on a page.
I almost saw that spillage
running out of his hands as he unlatchedthe gate of Patchin Place;
O, ee, I followed him down Sixth
in jacket weather, he, neatly madeand wearing tweed. At the bakery
he pointed to swirls of pastry. A baguette
poked out of his paper bag like a periscope.I remember asters, mums at the florist. Purple, pink
peeped out of the wrappings.
In the deli he would pickGenoese salami, sliced thin, my favorite,
or half-sour pickles, the color of lagoons
in Lamour, Hope, Crosby films?Far from frangipani, ee turned towards Sixth,
his face a mask, and I followed like Old Dog Tray
pretending the letter I’d never mail:Dear ee,
Your “Somewhere I have never traveled”
charts my realm, too, even as I step from here to there,
too moony by half to ask for your autograph.
I failed to say I lived with Roethke’s “sadness of pencils”
in gray cubicles, carbon paper stains
on hands that itched to composemore than shaky notes for poems after squabbling
with a lover, “glad and big.”
Moaning through rooms of maybe and no,I wanted the impertinence of Edward Estlin C, to tease
like hima sort of antic beauty of words reckoned on the page.
O, ee I wanted to leavemy lip prints on the flap of an envelope
holding the poems I’d never send,
though I could have left them at your door,you were that near
when I stalked you back then
in love with your line
–from Rattle #26, Winter 2006
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