Letter to Albion
On St. Paul Street between Mt. Royal and Preston
“I LOVE YOU” is sprayed across one sidewalk block
in orange letters, it soothed me for months
till mist turned to rain and someone not yet comfortable
carved, “I love me too,” beneath it and I remind myself
people have to make everything, even arrogance, their own
like how Alix must get confused making love to me in the shower
when your name used to be on the lease with hers
and when we still borrow words you taught us from jail
My little fee-fee, you called her, which is what men do
when they’re desperate enough for home, or women, or homelessness,
to wrap a rubber glove in a towel and lotion the inside
and fuck it till breakfast trays arrive, I’m lucky
it’s so easy to tell you I’m proud of you now for being a gump
Gay Uptown Motherfuckin Punk, uptown’s the free world
you said, with the voice of an after school special, and I’m glad to be there
but inside I got real good at pinochle
Cards are simple, I say, especially with a face like yours
which could stare down the banshee I let out
to intervene, that called you a junkie piece of shit
and said it was the seventh shame of the world
you weren’t dead, stared at that beast and said,
“I don’t give a fuck,” fuck’s having a sister for
if she can’t even wish you properly to your grave
But you didn’t go then, got up from the mattress punctuated
with bed bugs and cigarettes you slept with
like little dreams, and when you went away this time
you had no address and no taxes paying your way,
and it wasn’t taking up what you’d left but I did get
pretty quick to bed with her, after my body goes numb this time
my head breaking the shower tiles and feet almost
sucked down the drain I tell her, You gotta be kidding me,
you haven’t heard that one, something about Pavlov
in the title and she says, “Regin-ah, Regin-ah, Regin-ah-ah”
so I guess she’s like me and moans
every time she hears her own name, Alix thinks I’m full of myself
and I wouldn’t be if you weren’t so full of me first
And did I tell you, did I remember,
that last night someone heard my poem
and asked about our mother, if she was dead, I said,
“No, she teaches kindergarten,” as though that explained
the silence where she’d be, shock
registering shock, but I know to look at me she doesn’t show
What shows to look at me: If two people
spend enough time together, people think
they’re in love, if two women spend as much time
people know they’re faggots, as much as I’d like
to start a war, they’d have to be wrong for me to argue
I am always thinking for people,
if they’re confused at first glance, and confused again,
If I write to clarify or if writing’s a shrug of saying,
Your guess is as good as mine
and how I ended up on this couch with a long-
nosed shrink shrinking me, when I prefer
the floor if I’m about to get fucked
In your next letter, I wish you would say
where you are going and what you are doing*
I’m on St. Paul, reading love, I love too,
like with enough of it and no P.O. box
it’ll still send.
*from Elizabeth Bishop’s “Letter to N.Y.”
