Jonathan Alexander



A Week in the Big Easy


Some Tuesdays


During Mardi Gras, Glen found the
diva within: the black satin draped

around his body in invisible hoops
and the sequins lined up to catch

even the silliest glow from the ciga-
rette of a flannel-clad butch. The

headset alone cost last week's wages
but the effect was worth it, mating

goggles with a tiara with a black
wire mesh that would put the

fear of the lord in any passing
queen. But none of them passed on

Fat Tuesday: no one went without
his righteous dress on this day of reck-

oning. The best were the frat boys
from uptown in their usual uniform,

gawking astonishment, the smooth-
ness of their faces aghast. But still,

this one understands how the
fold of his jeans is itself a

summons: I am called to watch
him, bend, turn, fold again, call

with the crease of his sex riding
the cloth. Hey, throw me some-

thing, mister! And somehow, this
time, it doesn't matter if he can-

not hear me.



Letters


When I wrote my sister about the big
easy, I couldn't tell her the things my
body had just begun to know. Like the
café au lait burning my fingers in cheap
porcelain at the Café du Mond, how you
hold the cup anyway and sip, sip, sip.
Or the smell of dead fish, fresh on the
pier, perfume of everything in this part
of the city, slimy and slick, humidity rot-
ting the paints off a street artist's work be-
fore it dries on the canvases he will not
sell. Then the boys shoving and pushing
up Decatur in the morning of the party
they have not left: alcohol, spit, ciga-
rettes: it is more than the eyes can
handle, the sun basking in the glory
of these little debaucheries, acts un-
natural and fresh, burning more than my
fingers. No, Sophie would have no
idea how many times I could not
observe the forest for the trees, my
face in some puddle on Bourbon Street.
I cannot tell a lie. I will not write
what a word cannot know.






Fugue


This book, with its cracked spine and strange
cadences, broken speech of the only one
who knew the hours continuing long, a vigil
beside blood and breaking bones-this is you,
you say, but I cannot be so sure. You ex-
pect too much. You conjugate song out of be-

ing but leave behind a body bruised and be-
nign in its grip on the present. You hail stran-
gers, but they do not know what you will ex-
pect of them. And yet, you wonder how no one
can feel the grass you fondle with your toes. You
stare with slack eyes at the grocery boy, ever vigil-

antly watching for a fag like you, only their vigil-
ance matching your own: they check you out, be-
mused by your impotence, snickering coyly at you
and the kind of boy who goes home with strange
men to watch them undress; you are not the one
they have been waiting for, so you take your ex-

it-it's the least you could do. Still, there is ex-
citement as you roll your groceries away: vigil-
ance is the only way to go-for at the next stop, one
might still appear who can charm you into be-
lieving that there is nothing at all very strange
in stopping to leer at a boy. And this is what you

pray for, this is the mercy that everything you
wrote about yearns to embrace, hopes to ex-
tract from the bodies passing by. Then, estrange-
ment catches your throat during the nightly vigil
over the bodies of the soldiers you tend, as they be-
moan the absent family or distant lover, the ones

whose letters arrive, beyond your translation, one
at a time; but as you read, you catch again what you
miss, peddling your poetry around the camp, be-
side yourself with love for the watery eyes as they ex-
amine the blankness for something safe, a vigil
in the night of aloneness, in this country remote, strange.

So still, you listen for the words of strangers, for anyone
exhaling strength for your vigil; and the waiting you
endure becomes the book of everything you want to be.