Manhattan Noir 2 Read online

  and nothing to think about, except, O God,

  you love her now and it makes no difference

  if it isn’t spring. All seasons are warm

  in the warm air

  and the brass bed is always there.

  If you’ve done something

  and the cops get you afterwards, you

  can’t remember the place again,

  away from cops and streets—

  it’s all unreal—

  the warm air, a dream

  that couldn’t save you now.

  No one would care

  to hear about it,

  it would be heaven

  far away, dark and no music,

  not even a girl there.

  TIME AND ISIDORE LEFKOWITZ

  It is not good to feel old

  for time is heavy,

  time is heavy

  on a man’s brain,

  thrusting him down,

  gasping into the earth,

  out of the way of the sun

  and the rain.

  Look at Isidore Lefkowitz,

  biting his nails, telling how

  he seduces Beautiful French Canadian

  Five and Ten Cent Store Girls,

  beautiful, by God, and how they cry

  and moan, wrapping their arms

  and legs around him

  when he leaves them

  saying:

  Good bye,

  good bye.

  He feels old when he tells

  these stories over and over,

  (how the Beautiful Five and Ten Cent Store

  Girls go crazy when he puts on

  his clothes and is gone),

  these old lies

  that maybe nobody at all believes.

  He feels old thinking how

  once he gave five

  dollars to a girl

  who made him feel like other men

  and wonders if she is still alive.

  If he were a millionaire,

  if he could spend five dollars now,

  he could show them how

  he was strong and handsome then,

  better than other men.

  But it is not good to feel old,

  time is too heavy,

  it gets a man

  tired, tired

  when he thinks how time wears

  him down

  and girls, milk-fed, white,

  vanish with glorious smiling millionaires

  in silver limousines.

  BRIDGEWATER JONES: IMPROMPTU IN A SPEAKEASY

  When you’ve been through what I’ve been through

  over in France where war was hell

  and everything turned to blood and mud

  and you get covered with blood and rain

  and rain and mud

  then you come back home again,

  come back home and make good in business.

  You don’t know how and you don’t know why;

  it’s enough to make God stand still and wonder.

  It’s something that makes you sit down and think

  and you want to say something that’s clear and deep,

  something that someone can understand:

  that’s why I got to be confidential

  and see things clear and say what I mean,

  something that’s almost like a sermon,

  O world without end,

  amen.

  When you can’t see things then you get like Nelly

  and somebody has to put you out

  and somebody has to put you away

  but you can always see through Nelly.

  She unrolled like a map on the office floor,

  you could see her in the dark—

  a blind pink cat

  in the back seat of the Judge’s car.

  But she’d get cold in the Globe Hotel,

  singing songs like the Songs of Solomon,

  making the Good Book sound immoral

  then she’d say she was Mother Mary

  and the strength of sin is the law.

  World without end

  amen.

  Gentlemen, I had to fire Nelly,

  she didn’t see when a man’s in business,

  she didn’t know when a man’s a Christian

  you can’t go singing the Songs of Solomon,

  shouting Holy, holy, holy,

  making Mother of Christ a whore,

  cold as rain,

  dead blood and rain like the goddam war,

  cold as Nelly telling you hell you killed her baby,

  then she couldn’t take a letter

  but would sit down and cry

  like rain.

  It got so bad I couldn’t sleep

  with her hair and eyes and breasts and belly

  and arms around me

  like rain, rain,

  rain without end

  amen.

  I tell you gentlemen almighty God,

  I didn’t kill her dead baby,

  it was the rain

  falling on men and girls and cities.

  Ask the Judge (he’s got a girl)

  about a baby:

  a baby wants life and sun, not rain by God that’s death

  when you float a baby down the sewer into the

  East River with its lips

  making foam at the stern of ships

  head on for Liverpool in rain.

  You can’t see what happens in rain

  (only God knows, world without end)

  maybe war, maybe a dead baby.

  There’s no good when rain falls on a man;

  I had to make it clear,

  that’s what I wanted to explain.

  SELECTIONS FROM

  THE MCSORLEY POEMS

  BY GEOFFREY BARTHOLOMEW

  East Village

  (Originally published in 2001)

  MISYCK, THE NIGHT WATCHMAN

  I sit alone here at night, listening

  doors and windows twisted

  by McSorley’s heavy sag

  everything out of whack

  creak and groan of ghosts

  they speak, you know

  but Woodrow Wilson there

  I can’t understand him

  he garbles his words

  My brother Jerzy’s dead thirty years tonight

  we grew up here on 7th Street

  St. George’s, God and girls

  stickball, cars and beer

  then we started the skag

  Jerzy shot up first

  I was belting my arm

  when he sat back

  his eyes went real wide

  like flooring the Buick

  feeling that crazy rush

  Bill McSorley up there by the icebox

  resembles Teddy Roosevelt

  a smaller moustache

  timid eyes, sour mouth

  really did love his old man

  vowed to keep the bar as is

  kill time in this real place

  now just a face on the wall

  the bar a mute witness

  to Bill’s doomed love

  My favorite relic is the playbill from the 1880s

  a windmill and two dutchgirls

  on a forlorn spit of land

  the ocean a white-capped menace

  What Are The Wild Waves Saying?

  some March nights it blows

  so hard against the windows

  I’d swear it’s Jerzy’s voice

  Larry, homeless black wraith, taps the window

  I make him a liverwurst on rye

  some nights he has d.t.s

  tonight he’s souful

  I fucked up, he says

  shoeless, he begins again

  his scabrous circle

  East Village Odysseus

  The ripe nude in the painting back there

  I don’t like her much

  she knows she’s got it

  that mouth of plump disdain

&nb
sp; the parrot probably trained

  to do weird shit, yeah

  they liked that stuff back then

  And on every wall this guy Peter Cooper

  rich and famous in 1860

  John McSorley’s buddy

  they say he brought Lincoln here

  after some Great Hall speech

  that’s real strange, me here

  where Lincoln once drank

  At night I oil the old bar

  there’s a sag in the middle

  the mahogany a wornout horse

  I know it’s stupid, but I think

  Jerzy’s going to appear one night

  we’re all gonna sit here and talk

  him and Cooper and McSorley,

  Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson,

  maybe the fat nude, too

  MAD DEEGAN

  On the bustling sidewalk

  as the last gray light slides

  between concrete walls

  I move brokenly, madness

  a hunched raven on my shoulder

  behind Dean & DeLuca’s glass

  the elegant consume

  and defecate elsewhere

  invisible yet ubiquitous

  I shit on dark corners

  urinate with the feral

  apologia to Lowry

  but I am his pariah dog

  still alive in the ravine

  howling, quietly howling

  Educated with the elite

  Stuyvesant then Yale

  in the Seminary I became

  a brother of inculcation

  so I taught God’s children

  the nun Betty and I

  fell in love’s despair

  we quit our vows to marry

  we ate acid

  quickly madness won us over

  with fists we fought

  our words weapons of delight

  Betty took a train to

  somewhere, leaving then

  this tunnel in my brain

  a small black smudge

  with their pills the shrinks

  would me heal a hole

  At McSorley’s I swept up

  for simple cash and food

  washed pots and pans despite

  the burgeoning smear

  which one night

  blotted the running bullshit

  leaving the mind a nub

  where the raven pecks

  I am searching the streets

  catching the last sliding light

  on my hunched form

  the pariah dog is here

  is here somewhere

  THE LIFE OF JIMMY FATS

  Call me Jimmy

  I’m not fat, I’m obese

  nowhere to hide, pal

  but I learned something

  people love you

  if you’re real fat

  I mean, really huge

  you save them

  So I got my first job

  in Coccia’s on 7th Street

  Italian sit-down deli

  Jewish actors from Second Avenue

  Ukey Moms from the block

  laborers, clerks from Wannamaker’s

  number-runners an’ schoolkids

  you know the years

  how they quietly roar by

  I was the best short-order guy

  ate like a champ

  then Artie sold the building

  Two doors up was the saloon

  busy lunch an’ lazy afternoons

  nights packed with young guys

  J.J. the owner knew me from when

  I was a kid, burned my arm on

  his ’48 Buick, Irish guys laughing

  that fat kid in the photo, that’s

  me, walking by the bar in 1950

  Stampalia the chef had just died

  announcing lunch

  he’d sound an old bugle

  this time his aorta blew

  I got the job

  old guys in the bar whispered

  but I was big, fast, an’ funny

  no bugles, just Jimmy Fats

  I won ’em over with laughs

  I loved that place

  In the doo-wop band

  I sang lead, us guys

  from Aviation High

  we cut some songs, never made it

  Joey overdosed on skag

  Lou got married with kids

  Willy stepped on a mine in Nam

  me, I kept cooking an’ eating

  McSorley’s in the ’70s

  me & an’ Frank the Slob

  we humped it all

  Ray the waiter, then George

  he was the best

  took care of everyone

  workers, cops, students, firemen

  we played nags an’ numbers

  then George quit

  oldtimers died off

  Frank’s fuckin’ bitch drone began

  waiters coming an’ going

  the only sane ones

  Minnie the cat an’ me

  Shit, I was up to 630 by ’79

  when I fell in love

  Lace was beautiful and big

  so we starved an’ screwed to 260

  after the baby, she got mental

  nights she cried a lot

  it sounded like me far off

  but I can’t remember when

  One black night I woke up

  Lace was gone

  note said she went to L.A.

  that was it

  I don’t think it was love

  just some kind of lonely thing

  fat people get

  Still, I was McSorley’s chef

  I was 500 an’ floating

  little Tanya screaming

  Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!

  raising a kid alone ain’t easy

  the fucking dog Blacky

  big Lab, shedding

  hated the heat he always did

  I was on the throne when he

  ripped her head halfway off

  broke her neck

  the funeral was like Ma’s

  at Lancia’s on Second Avenue

  next to the old 21 Place

  the guys from the bar

  murmured condolences

  shook their heads

  if Lacey hadn’t run away

  if I hadn’t been on the shitter

  if, if, a million ifs

  Back at work

  Frank’s fuckin’ bitch

  became a foul mantra

  nothing to say nor do

  that’s when I began

  to eat

  really eat

  I couldn’t get out of bed

  fucking buzz in my ear

  a numb hissing

  finally I got up

  then the buzz was a hornet

  the floor rose up, stung me

  sideways the last thing I saw

  some pizza crust and the doll

  Tanya’s dusty Barbie

  That was the end of Jimmy Fats

  they buried me out in Queens

  between Tanya an’ Ma

  the stone says 1939-1990

  but how’s anybody to know

  you know

  what really happened?

  PART III

  DARKNESS VISIBLE

  THE LUGER IS A 9MM AUTOMATIC HANDGUN WITH A PARABELLUM ACTION

  BY JERROLD MUNDIS

  Central Park

  (Originally published in 1969)

  Two years ago I was walking in Central Park around the shallow bowl of water beneath the dollhouse Norman castle that is the weather station. I had approached from the north. I was not thinking.

  Ahab said, “You are despondent.” He mushed his consonants. His s was lisped. A five-foot branch was wedged rather far back in his mouth. The bark was rough. A string of blood and saliva dipped and swayed from his jaw.

  I considered a little. “Disconsolate.”

  He gagged, dropped the branch and insisted on despondence. His consonants we
re clear and his lisp was gone. I shrugged. We went on in silence. Padding alongside, he cocked his head up at intervals to look at me. Then he stopped and began snuffing the air. He pinpointed the direction and trotted off with a light springy step. His vibrancy sometimes fires me with jealousy. It was an oak, which he read with his nose. Then he made a tight circle, deciding, balanced on three legs and urinated.

  He returned and said, “Disconsolation suggests an edge of emotional keenness, whereas despondence—”

  “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “You err. Whereas, as I was saying, despondence is essentially ennui, a moribund state lightly salted with bitterness.”

  “You cut me up, moving the way you do.”

  “Do I?” The corners of his long mouth pulled back in his equivalent of a smile, which is not grotesque, but which, neither, is the legitimate article. You must project certain responses to understand that it is a smile. “That’s improvement,” he said.

  “I don’t see it.”

  “Sure you do.”

  “I don’t like this conversation.”

  He sat down and scratched his ear. He asked me if I would like to throw a stick for him to chase. He was attempting rapprochement, but he was also going for himself. Like everyone. Though why this should matter, I don’t know. Quivering, poised, eager, focused, he was naked and ugly in his exposure. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have minded. That is what he is, that is what he is about. But he had made me angry. And the walk had not helped. I was still weary, incredibly. Often the walks were successful. Watching him run and cavort and do all his healthy animal things, my shuffle would lengthen to a stride and I would begin to feel vigorous and defined, primed with purpose. “No, I don’t want to throw a stick for you.”

  “I sigh,” he said. “Langorously.”

  “Shutup.”

  Climbing the walk to the weather station we came upon seven fat pigeons pecking bread crumbs in a semicircle around a thin young girl in a skirt that, it being short and she being seated, was well up her skinny thighs. She wore no stockings. Her knees were bony, like flattened golf balls. Ahab’s ears clicked forward and his shoulders bunched. He went into his stifflegged walk. Fifteen feet from the fat pigeons. His mouth opened, drops of spittle appeared. Ten feet from the fat pigeons. He breathed with explosive little pants. Five feet from the fat pigeons. He now looked a sloppily worked marionette. Four feet from the fat pigeons….

  I caught him an instant before he lunged, an instant so close to the act that they shredded into one another. “Ahab, heel!”

  He jerked, half wheeled, went up on his hind legs and scored the pavement with his claws when he struck, but there was no forward progress.

  In place, eyes wild on the seven fat pigeons thrashing the air in panicked escape, he performed a zealot’s dance, a dance of possession. He was a plastique detonated within a steel room, all that power, all that energy—contained.

  The skinny girl was on her feet. She was not pretty. Her skin was the color of sour milk. She was jabbing her finger at me and shrieking. It had to do with Ahab and the birds.