| |
three poems
CHRISTMAS
Our first
Christmas together
we picked up my baby brother
drove upstate to cut
our own tree. You lit
a menorah, sang prayers
I didn’t understand. The cat
stared at the candles, shadow
boxed with hanging tinsel.
You gave me an out of print
Rascals’ album, a Magic Johnson
basketball, two black notebooks.
You opened a used wok, an antique
pin, pajamas with furry feet.
We went to bed, wrestled
before we made love. This year
I stood on the corner of First
and Seventh, fed a pocketful
of quarters to a telephone,
listened to you say,
“Wait for the beep now,”
until a bit past midnight.
MIDNIGHT
You want no
one to know
you’re home alone. You sit
in the dark, listen to Miles blow
“All Blue” through headphones.
Upstairs, a party. A glass smashes,
laughter and salsa splash through cracks
in the ceiling. Bottle rockets shoot
lines of light past your window.
The phone rings. You listen
to the machine answer. “Happy
New Year. Don’t forget about the circus
next Saturday. I miss you Daddy.”
You re-wind the tape,
play it back twice.
SUBWAY
POCKET POEM
Four middle
aged men enter the car,
hard hats in one hand, flashlights
in the other. They wear white
and orange striped slickers, drop
into seats without words. They sit
with legs spread, heads back and eyes
shut. I watch lines of sweat slide
down their necks. Broadway-Lafayette.
Three of them nod, get off.
The fourth hunches over, reaches
into his back pocket. Fingers unroll
a lean magazine and his eyes become
lit trees on Christmas Eve as he flips
through glossy pictures of electric trains.
Tony Gloeggler was born, grew up, lives and probably
will die in NYC. He currently runs a group home for
developmentally disabled men in Brooklyn. His work has
appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. His
chapbook, ONE ON ONE, won the 1998 Pearl Poetry Prize
and ONE WISH LEFT, his first full length collection,
was published by Pavement Saw Press in 2002. His next collection, My Other
Life, was published by Jane Street Press in 2005. He can be
reached at AGloeggler@nyc.rr.com.
More of Tony's work is available on Poetz
2005, Poetz
2004 and Poetz
2002. |