Visitations

i

I've seen your fisted elsewhere eyes before

in Indianapolis

you had a firm

beat-up beautiful face

on the midmoon dance floor

in the harsh night dancing

you, you smiled seldomly

smiled as if for the beating of distant wings.

You had an ass was like the cradle of the world--

a cry for rocking; was

the halo of your presence, it was

that for which all seeking intimacy reached out.

I watched more 'n more from the table,

watched around the bodies of soldiers and sluts,

stared until all the wallflowers were watching me

and then, bug-eyed, I called you Angel

of Experience.

Eddy, my AWOL friend, said

"What?" said: "Nobody sees the likes-a HER

anymore." Said: "Man, yer dreamin'!"

That night Eddy scored

ii

'n left me "drunk and screaming at angels treading

the highway florescence outside the post gates,"

according to the MP report that morning.

iii

I've seen you elsewhere as here in Boston's

Harvard Gardens, alright. I've seen you: but you're

not the girl, the girl especial, the go-go

girl I saw in Indianoplace--though

the air your body shapes

table to table is similar,

not sensual precisely

but gradual-like, unspoken.

There was a distance about her who wore a suit

of white pique on stage in the jackhammering

fleshy club that hosted has-been

direct-from-New York show biz stars,

almost like a general's or the Pentagon's,

a distance far as the measure of her knowing;

the slight quiver below my belt told me

sure as the stars above the cold stockade.

iv

There was a distance too about the girl

in the dark corner of the dingy bar

outside Fort I ee's gates,

in the corner too dark

to see, where only by a cigarette's glow

did I know you were there, know to send

you a cheap beer "courtesy of a soldier"

v

who later in Washington saw you on the Hill

one warm rainy afternoon in Mr. Henry's

(you looked a little like Lady Freedom who sways atop the Big Gold Dome)

in Mr. Henry's you cropped right outa the jukebox

stood before it, leaning o'er it,

and sang the song she played

and were the song she sang

while I, I on official business

(all sergeants drink)

never did get back to the E-ring sober

vi

nor did I leave Georgetown straight the night

you sat out-of-it and single-minded

in the cavern on the corner of M 'n Wisconson Avenue--

inside the bouncers there

I was talking 'bout Forts Lee and Harrison

with my ol' sarge, Duke

when WHOMP!

--there you were,

shining. And a little sad.

On a napkin I wrote a note,

said:

"What's a nice girl

doing in a place . . .

I'm not trying to make

you: jus' wanted to let

you know someone knew."

A moonlighting GI handed her the napkin.

He pointed. She turned, threw me a kiss.

I was cool, had the whole horny joint

of pinheaded soldiers staring at us...

till closing time, night's golden time

you called and I was too tight to hear.

GodDAMN.

vii

I've seen you elsewhere, alright. Harvard?--hell!

Downtown in San Francisco, inside the carnival

of neon you came on "top-n-bottomless"

and high-up, as in a ship's crow's nest.

A dancer, you had tassles on your tits

ferris-wheeling: one left, the other right,

hung in the blue light, nipples bleeding

--and our eyes

as if by

lightning stung--

wasn't a man in the house wasn't dying

for you, not one derelict or soldier

'cept me who bought bourbon like cotton candy.

viii

I've seen your fisted elsewhere eyes before,

the stillness of, the grace of your waitressing:

Mona Lisa, Apple of my Eye, Jane

behind your face of sweet distress

lies a toughened gentleness

weary and full of what long caring?