Gregory Crosby on the theme of Las Vegas
Bridge of Sighs
And as I stepped into the gondola that would carry me into my life, the gondolier began his clockwork aria (paid by the hour). The Grand Canal, chlorinated. Other brides, other grooms, swarming, yellowjackets washed out in Venetian fluorescence. Laughed, how could we not? Below, under, a world, doubling, down, Our Most Siren Republic. Las Vegas, Venezia: impossible, surrounded. One sinks, another rises. Above or below, in a Roman tub or green-felt dungeon: a Magi couple exchanging their ten thousandth bitter line. But we, gifted, drifted, serenaded by a striped shirt (what dreams, deferred). We were different. The lucky sort, the players, playing. Vowed, kissed, before our sets, parents (dubious), before, lidless, the black teardropped-eyes of God (whose art, in wedding-cake heavens).Vowed, kissed, before Fortuna’s Paycheck Wheel: wedded to this, floating, in the floating world of men, made. Whispered nothings, sweet I guess (who can tell?) as the sky turned blue-in-the-face, smooth, plastered. Moving forward, upward, onward, baby, the sky’s the, uh, limit (right where the contractors put it). Brands, winked, shops, worn, & shoppers’ babble against our song, echoing, echoing.
We could have been the last couple on Earth, but we were not. On earth. Streets full of water—please advise.
Still, we, different (did I mention?). Beneath a shadow, weak, the final bridge (just before cigars, high-end handbags, cruel shoes): the gondolier’s voice faltered, vincero! swallowed, a cough, as if a bug swooned, downward (what possible fly in that climate, controlled?) Looked up, she and I (yes, she was there too—what’s a wedding without a bride?). He laughed, recovered, picked up where the song left off. We laughed—how could we, could we not—as he delivered us (at last, at last, that damned photographer, waiting, paid by the hour) to that piazza, conditioned by air, terror. To the very hour, executed, (we two! at last! O angel! O hour!) of departure.
___________
Fremont
I am lucky. On iTunes, Armstrong solos
on “West End Blues,” still breathing, still dead,
here at the Four Queens, Room 909.
I am one after. Still breathing, not dead.
I am happiest when I play the blues.
My blues light as black patent, not matte.
Shining like vinyl, deep in the grooves.
The gentleman at the shoeshine stand
at the Golden Nugget slips playing cards
into my shoes to keep the black at bay.
I am polished. I am lucky. I was just born
this way. He’s a different shoeshiner
from yesterday but just the same.
The light moves like a little pale moon
across his dark pate. We are both bald;
we shine on all right. Instant coffee’s
going to get you, so I’ll wait. Later,
I’ll walk to the Golden Gate for breakfast.
Walking on sunshine, painted black.
I am back, and I am lucky. I know
it takes twenty-one not twenty
to appease the gods of Megabucks.
One spin changes your life. I am spinning
every day. Watch my hands for the changes.
Sun moon star shine. I wonder which cards
like dry little tongues are snug beside my
dark socks. Perhaps I am flush.
The Devil peeks out from my socks
in a pattern of red. His tongue is hanging
out. There’s a halo around his pitchfork,
he’s been shoveling it all the live long day.
What’s the Devil anyway but a blues,
a worksong, chorus upon chorus. I am lucky,
what can I say. That’s why they call me shine.
Pops shined on Nixon when asked to play
the White House. Fuck ‘em, growled Pops
(you can hear it on the tapes, all that Satchmo
had in common with Tricky Dick). Pops
didn’t give a shit what you might say.
That’s how the blues is played, smiling
all the way. Don’t let anybody tell you
what to play. Somebody will still pay.
I am still breathing, still paying.
I am lucky, I am full of blues.
The blacks I polish and wear out.
At breakfast, the short order cook,
his own shaved brown pate bobbing
along to the tune of a golden earring,
starts to sing Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
Yes. Let it. Outside, I am frightful.
Inside, the fire is so, just so. I am
banked but I glow. In the casino,
Cheap Trick sings Surrender, surrender.
But don’t give yourself away.
Yes. I’m just lucky that way.
______________
Lewis Avenue
Everything fades except its representation.
I’m a river of gin flowing in search of a still, sour ocean of tonic.
Someone is asleep on the long shot.
The homeless are secure in their homeland.
I am so far from home that I am home.
Wherever my hat is, is (that’s why I wear it).
Across the way, the Duke in his fur collar breaks the spine of a paperback.
The Patriot beneath his star-spangled bandanna cradles a burning Parliament.
St. Jerome annotates his Bible in between sips from forty days, forty nights.
In stained red sweatpants, the Wandering Jew holds forth his coffee cup, as if in search
of the Wandering Waitress.
Salieri contorts his nut-brown face and conducts his crushed can oratorio.
Virginia Dare draws her knees to her chin, huddled against the chill of sunlight.
In the stone’s throw, the bankrupts sort their failures, vendors setting out their wares.
The parade passes in honor of suits, sack lunches.
Here and there, a silent messenger.
The courthouse is a miracle.
I am down to a sunless sea. I am calm, and out of order.
Yes, and you’re out of order, and you’re out of order.
We’re all out of order.
Who else did they think would sit here when they built it?
Every waiting room is painted robin’s egg blue.
Have you ever seen a robin’s egg?
You’ll have to take my word for it.
It’s the middle of the day.
It’s home.
Here comes the judge.
_______________________
Charleston Underpass
Everyone avoids it in a heavy rain; it floods in a flash.
But even when bone dry, you still dive, driving beneath it to break
the surface of the Union Pacific rails; rising now, windows down,
on a late moon-baked night, some July twenty years in the past,
to smell the newly baked bread from the Holsum Bakery,
its neon clock proclaiming the middle of the night is now
… Hours fresher. The scent in that ellipsis, that pause
as you turn your eyes to the left, the fresher flooding
you in a flash, the miracle of the loaves that whips
around your nose and eyes and recedes like the flood
as you pass. It would be worth it, every night of
your benighted life, to stay up this late, to take
this drive, to surface like a drowning man
who didn’t know he was drowning.
The bakery is gone, but they saved the sign.
Everything is gone, but they save the signs,
though, sometimes, the signs too are gone,
and there’s nothing but dark water
where the road bows to the world.
_________________
Sig(n)nature
For Jerry Misko
The haunted house always wins.
Foxy’s Firehouse burns,
always up, never down.
Gone with the rest, those words
like pasties twirling in the dark,
come-ons sans their referents.
Frontiers of dunes, sand, dust.
She’s got neon in her veins.
Strikes her poses, & holds ‘em.
He shutters. His hands do not
tremble at the glow, empty,
refulgent, that spells it out,
giggling, beautiful, blank:
sign here… here… here…
here. Dyer’s hand, dyeing.
Signifier, re-signing.
Author Biography
Gregory Crosby’s work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Court Green, Copper Nickel, Paradigm, Rattle, Poem, Jacket, Pearl, [sic], and The South Carolina Review. He is a recent winner of the Marie Ponsot Poetry Prize.