i fuck like a buffalo
i smoke like a China man
i drink like an Irish man
and
i eat dinner
out of a can
she met me at the 200th street dyckman station
the first thing i saw was the fort tyron restaurant marquee
next i was in the deli buying three 24 ouncers of bud at six in the morning
we hadn't seen each other for months
when we watched fort apache the bronx
she said pinero was a terrible actor
she was more interested in the wooden bed that poe's wife-cousin died in
which still rests in their white cottage
near fordham
the bells the bells
we heard the bells in the bronx botanical gardens
she said it was a good place for a first date
then we were in the peggy rockefeller rose garden
a dollar is a dollar is a dollar
it's the tradition on my birthday to go see a movie
last year was the city of god at the red vic
with a haight street muni bus freak-ride after
by the time this poem gets published
the papers say that bus route will be disconnected
so if you're on market street and wanna get up to haight street
use your feet
she loves mark mulder
and i'm sure that's what was on her mind
while we hit the rubber yellow balls in the batting cages at coney island
and rode the wooden cyclone
that dangerous death-teasing ride
where a five hundred pound man releases the level and sends you into the sky
she wants to be a man
and stare at girls
tells me to go with the asian teen-age hotties
sitting across from us on the subway
eating the same sandwich
all five of them
if i am so interested
she tells me she doesn't have to touch them if she is a dominatrix
and has a model shoot in brooklyn tomorrow
she was the top 2% that responded to their website
but she has to lose the ten pounds she gained while i visited
we ate like pigs
and mistakenly mentioned we wanted to make huevos rancheros
to a nuyorican lady in the supermarket
she says our interracial couple ass should be living on the upper west side
but instead i walk by the old men playing dominoes on coffee tables
sitting in folding chairs
drinking beer as arms raise above white tee shirts
the fire hydrants have been turned on
children are splashing each other with plastic cups of cool water
yelling, "i'm gonna get you wet!"
and salsa and salsa and more salsa music
she squirts the ketchup and hot sauce on our pastelito queso
and yells at me as the number nine streaks across the gray sky
on the above-the-street elevated subway track
we're going to the zoo
and she wants to see elephants
and i came so close today
to that street corner with the man
if you know what i mean
Jonathan Hayes is the author of Echoes from the Sarcophagus (3300 Press, 1997) and St. Paul Hotel (Ex Nihilo Press, 2000). Recently published by Remark, The Silt Reader and Zaum; he edits the literary / art magazine Over the Transom.