A Brief History of Cockroaches, Glitter Rock, and Inappropriate Love Objects
(on the theme of David Bowie)
Once upon a time, my nemesis was the cockroach,
that summer I worked at the Indian import shop in Brattle Square.
Their squadrons aligned for daily battle over the barricades:
drying dishes next to the apartment kitchen sink.
Whenever I got up in the night, turned on the light,
how they’d scatter, their claws a skin-skimming whisper
married to hiss. I tried every variation of the “Vegas roach trap”—
stale beer, coffee grounds, sticks up the sides of a Mason jar
and Vaseline around the lip to increase the slick.
All hail, the cockroach, apotheosis of tenacity!
It was the roaches in their 4th of July parade
across my futon, the final straw that finally
drove me into Ted’s bed (and arms)
even though we weren’t that kind
of roommates—one more who was gay not bi.
This was, after all, 1974: the U.S. still in Vietnam,
the Dead on their first tour without Pigpen,
and Bowie at the Music Hall in Boston where he donned
a Ziggy Stardust jumpsuit for half the evening’s songs.
My enemy should have been tanning
so to protect this Irish-mottled skin.
Or Camel straights because of my (future) asthma lungs.
Or bare feet on the hot tar, bottle-shard Massachusetts Avenue.
Or the guy who grabbed my crotch under my hippie skirt
that eve walking home from King of Hearts
at the cinema on Central Square.
Those days of rush and foolish trust,
any stranger might be christened “friend.”
A guy’d walk into a store, blond hair a waterfall
over his Pendleton plaid. Back-and-forth sallies
about what you’re reading (Anaïs Nin), the decline
of literacy (shameful), whether Mr. “Enemies List” Nixon
will really be impeached. Then, cosmic coincidence,
you’re both Tassajara Bread Book devotees!
The next night, you’re on the Red Line to Alewife,
a dinner of lentil loaf, alfalfa sprouts, and Something Missing
muffins. Followed by lips locked over a rickety
kitchen table then the (requisite) screwing on the linoleum floor.
After? Midnight’s T back to the Buddha
who, by the way, is not in favor of lust.
Who teaches to love, accept, live and let every enemy live,
cockroaches and all. I’m not sure I ever got to that,
that August when I watched the swans in the Public Garden
and walked walked walked those city streets, restless
to escape my awkward infestation-situation,
notebook in a messenger bag, my temporary
enemy an inkless fountain pen.
_________
Ligature
(on the theme Enough Rope)
Tie Me Down, Tie Me Up
Strips of rag, one nubby wool, one silk,
we re-arrange our cast-offs, braided, taut.
Down to what’s underneath we merge—
your strapless bustier, my Gucci jock.
Touch is our glove, our tether,
& our truss—the ties that lash,
that fret us to the bed. Oh,
lift your legs & let them wrap around
my clarinet,
my woody reed,
my head!
Licorice Stick
Jimmy Dorsey tootled “Green Eyes,”
with—oh, the power to send me ogling
your rings of amber, my cautionary hepcat.
Hell, even Ol’ Blue Eyes wanted to fly us
to the moon. Why didn’t we take him up on that?
Go go-go before Bechet blew jail, his clarinet
emptied of the gone-away blues while we two
dueled, all our wrong chords snorted out.
Likely, the reed was simply slipping,
needed a new ligature, thread or hemp.
Ampersand
Our typeset was a unit.
Two graphemes make a glyph
& letter shapes depend on circumstance.
The Latin et for “and” signs & in Trebuchet.
And per se and (ampersand):
& by itself is and.
And me myself?
I start, you stop,
I finish sentences. Fee! Fie!
Foe! Fum! Why won’t you let me
fl-fl-float, slurred ligature,
disfigured cuneiform?
And What About the Necktie?
He went crazy for the ties,
that winter of detox,
rehab, the county
psychiatric ward.
Every pattern,
every hue to match
the expensive suits
tailored to fit.
Blame it on the manic—
he must have draped
one hundred
by the end.
When his landlord walked
the rooms with me
an empty rack,
all that was left.
Where Mandrakes Grow
Estragon: What about hanging ourselves?
Vladimir: Hmm. It’d give us an erection.
Estragon: (highly excited). An erection!
Vladimir: With all that follows. Where it falls mandrakes grow.
That’s why they shriek when you pull them up. Did you not know that?
Estragon: Let’s hang ourselves immediately!
—Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Pressure on the cerebullum from the noose.
Forensically, postmortem priapism is an indicator—
death was likely swift and violent.
Lynch me, hog-tie, jute my carotid,
cinch it closed. All I wanted was
to merge—the font, the fount, the godhead.
Angel lust.
Suicide Vaudeville
Way out on Sapsucker Road,
a sidewalk to shovel and snowdrift
steps to reach the song & dance.
Rifle behind the door,
a wineglass shattered on the stairs.
Daisy-chained neckties lassoed to beams
in the living room where the radio
belted the “Best of Broadway,”
Ethel Merman and Everything’s coming
up roses, her mezzo soprano clobbering
every tenor within reach.
Better Gypsy than Sweeney Todd,
the ambulance driver said. Meat pies
and a trail of blood would have been—
let’s face it, a little too burlesque.
The Final Inamorata
That tightening loop,
a failed
meridian.
Un-
blessed the bruising ties.
They bind.
They rend.
Author Biography
Born in the coal country of northeastern Pennsylvania, Nancy Flynn’s writing has received a James Jones First Novel Fellowship and an Oregon Literary Fellowship; her second chapbook, Eternity a Coal’s Throw, will be published by Burning River in 2012. A former university administrator, she now lives in Portland, Oregon. In 2004, she happily reclaimed www.nancyflynn.com from the realtor in Massachusetts who had it first.