I May Be Old
“I may be old,” the t-shirt taunted,
“but I saw all the great bands,”
and I thought of all the bands we did see:
the Stones, the day after our wedding,
though they played as if their grandmothers
had been kidnapped by music-haters.
Better, much better, were the Airplane,
Sly and the Family Stone, Quicksilver
Messenger Service, Muddy Waters
in Central Park one starry electric night,
B.B King at the old Fillmore East,
and of course the Band,
who when I mentioned their name
to the much younger lover
of an old friend, asked, “Which band?”
“You know,” I said, “The Band!
‘The Weight,’ ‘Up on Cripple Creek’”?
Still, a stare as if I were speaking
a strange dialect of Martian.
At least she’d heard of the Grateful Dead,
even if her nose curled as if at a corpse, though
none of this was very important compared
to the election and climate change.
But still! The Band? The Dead?
Tommy in Love
He must’ve been sixteen the last time I saw him, unmistakable for his height, the way he swaggered, like the world should beg him not to beat the hell out of it, his black crewcut so sharp it could put your eyes out, by his hippo-waddle, but even more dangerous than those irascible river horses Disney dressed in tutus.
But there he was, an arm around an actual girl, and she didn’t seem to shudder, but leaned into his shoulder, the two of them glued at the hip.
When they turned into Rudy’s candy store, I ventured a glance, sharing a sundae, Tommy with love-hungry eyes as she spooned the melting confection into his maw and her mouth.
I was tempted to demand: “Don’t you know he laughs while strangling puppies and kittens and beats up little kids to watch them cry, that he smashes heads to hear them crack against brick walls?
But she looked like she’d eat him up for the cutest thing in creation, or maybe drawn to danger, or to prove even a demon can be saved.
Tommy Lockhart and the Pastrami Sandwich
My fourteenth birthday, I was tromping home from Aaron’s Deli, the pastrami sandwich— a birthday present to myself— begging me to tear open the bag and anoint my jowls with that fatty heaven.
But there was Tommy Lockhart, our neighborhood ogre, blocking the snowdrift-narrow sidewalk, his sneer stiletto-sharp, his right arm thrust into, “I’m hungry, gimme that!”
I froze, too scared to run.
The birthday miracle? The tree Tommy was hulking under shuddered, and down cascaded a backhoe load of snow, Tommy a sputtering abominable snowman.
I ran, skidded into my safe home turf of East 7th Street, pastrami aromas— not the desert stench of Tommy-terror— filling my nose, my mouth, my whole body with the holy drool of anticipating that luscious first bite:
the best birthday yet.
Possessed
Tommy was possessed as much as he possessed us, when he’d grab a smaller kid to slap, punch, and kick, shouting incoherencies of rage.
What was he roaring? Hatred for Jews? For the priests and nuns who beat him at St. Rose of Lima, after they made him confess to their slimy fantasies? Loathing for his father, who might’ve smacked him silly for the hell of it, or was a milquetoast? Detestation for his mother, who drank to numb her husband’s fists, then take it out on Tommy with her palms and whatever kitchen implement leapt into her hand, or who tried to coddle him, when he was sure even Jesus hated him?
Who knew? He’d bellow as if stuck by a hat pin long and sharp as a scorpion’s stinger; his fists pistoned, spit flew: demon- haunted like the Gadarene Swine. Then he and his band gone, until his next rampage.
Alas, no cliff for them to leap off of.
Robert Cooperman’s latest collection is Steerage from Kelsay Books, which is also bringing out The Death and Rebirth of Ophelia.