after Martin Wong

I shake an eight ball. Try again later. I wake up, shake it, let my hair down,

shake it again. Hair on shoulders. Shake it again. I shake it

until It is certain it is decidedly so without a doubt yes

definitely yeah sure you may rely on it as I see it yes yes

lack of authority yes Libra no most likely on fire outlook on fire outlook not so good yes

yes shake it again signs point to yes shake it reply no shake it again hazy

a tenement

a home a maybe a shake it again most likely yes but again

better not tell you now shake it again cannot predict now

ask again later concentrate and ask again

ask again later don’t count on it or Lower Manhattan or San Francisco my reply is no

a Bronx of no, a Brooklyn of yes

my sources say no outlook not so good very doubtful

shake it again. I read these terms in the poems of Martin Wong

some bright almost iridescent on a page

hung up on the wall like the “Crystal Dagger”

on paper a green, almost copper shimmer oxidized the poem

a poem of knives,

not crystal

and street heat

in the middle of the New York night. Martin writes,

GAUNT HE STAGGERS

THRU ERRUPTING

STREETS OF FLESH

a hand that moves across

the paper moves across

the canvas moves

across the face of the city,

which is round and un-

smiling as a storm comes in to surge

the East River and Hudson,

my face or yours.

Opposite me the Bridge, opposite me Martin, who improvises

a cube of bricks, of crystal, and also of crystal thrown across the bridge

tossed to a man who leapt there at his own reflection

a crystal Bridge

staggering flesh at night

and who went under fire,

a crystal of firefighters whose smell still lingers with us, with Martin,

opposite the weather of firefighters in the time of fire fighting,

of pity and light spitting in the mist,

a crystal hurricane, a crystal scroll a dagger of crystal, and a stylus

of gold to write upon the crystal. A painting reads:

I REALLY LIKE THE WAY
FIREMEN SMELL WHEN
THEY GET OFF WORK.
IT’S LIKE HICORY SMOKED
RUBBER AND B.O.
AFTER HE SHOWERS AND
THROWS ON THE OLD SPICE
I ALWAYS LOSE INTEREST
HE THINKS             IN REALITY
I’M ONLY                 I’M ONLY
INTO HIM                INTO
FOR HIS                  HIM
UNIFORM                FOR THE
SMELL

I’ve never crushed on fire fighters, but I understand

the appeal of their hive of fire, seduced

of smoke their bodies become that smoke, and a haze

that stays among them

among men in shower.

The motif perpetuates itself

against the desire to suppress it, an eight ball that’s gone milky

at the request to see into it whatever prism world the globular light that obtains
a

future. I pull my hair up so that I can let it down again. Nothing appears clearly,

and what does appear hides

its contents almost immediately,

only to urge you

to move on. Fogged, “a look of glass”

cracks when you see yourself

within it, a look of glass shores up

your image (the face of a fire

fighter) against the vast difference between reality and the face

 that appears there, present before the mirror, naked in a towel,

face, lips, a jowly presence that appears in fog, rises up

to say hi, before

submerging again in crystal a view of elsewhere with you in it. Elsewhere,

a landscape with a hole in a brick wall

through which

the subject enters,

its afterglow vacated

in the dark such that what remains

flattens into heaven,

a heaven of bricks curled in mossy growth,

also into a goodbye, take what you will,

bid farewell to whomever sleeps below it, in the street,

or behind the hole, who enters it in fealty

to the premise that it exits to another side, a world’s mouth, its lips

gold-leafed to speak in the world’s tongue so that it may write

to the other side,

etched with a knife in the side,

yes maybe outlook not so good

try again later

cut on a firefighter’s helmet,

my helmet,

dropped in a hole

through which

flames claw up