4/30 - The Airshaft

(Thanks to  Jerry Garcia whose poem Plastic Bottle Vodka inspired me to finish this piece. )

THE AIRSHAFT

They watched

like we were their Friday Night Fights

our tiny single bed facing the window

onto the airshaft

3 feet from their window

onto the airshaft

a New York summer dripping soot like lust

forcing windows gaping with the hope of breath

The heat so fascist

it had taken away our right to vote and bear arms

they watched us tangle

perched on their sill

unabashedly is too weak a description

they were avid

we atop drenched sheets

could not stand to be under the weight

could not stand to be less than naked

door to our squalid room closed to neighbors

window the only hope of resistance

unable to be less than wide-open

interlocking legos of love

we entertained them

our teen hunger perhaps reminiscent

as we spent ourselves on ourselves

because there was nothing else to spend

pent up and penned

Poverty is a kind aphrodisiac sometimes.

They probably didn’t have a t.v. either;

probably didn’t have dinner either

even a fan.  Air conditioning

is for the Upper East Side.

They had screaming kids likely no green cards

They did not know our language

but our pictures were the same

We were in this airshaft together

suffocating, pores open, sweat-stained

sex the only thing telling us

we weren't dead yet

Like we were Monday Night Football

They watched.  Sometimes as we turned

or as I got up with you streaming inside me

I’d catch her eye.  She would not look away.

We were their Times Square. 

We were enough. After us,

they could go quietly to sleep, I bet

without having to incur more heat

to heap on the wrath of August in Hell.

Maybe you weren’t my first love

just my first tango with squalor

Its scents and sounds intermingled

with the fester of self-sacrifice, devotion,

loyalty beyond self-health and happily ever after

Now so used to these kidney punches of love

I get nervous the morning after

when I don’t piss blood

our rage south of Harlem facing

days with out food to keep the lights on

nights no electricity to share this one box 

of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese for all 3 meals.

It’s what you do.  For love.  On 113th Street.  One August.

You eat mayonnaise sandwiches.

You fuck til you drop.

You let this couple watch across the airshaft

so close you could touch them

without charging them a damn penny

for a fine show.                                 

c. e. amato

4.11

4/30