Back when I worked at Charlie’s
on Broadway,
in Seattle not in New York,
I got it for once from both sides –
the dreamy looks and jokes,
the ever-in-my-section, thumb-rubbing-
fingers like the promise of money –
and the thing itself – big tips and a
206- just for being me.
The money part’s the part that made me not
mind it overly much – though I’d hustle in and out
when it was a group of guys,
with their hush-before-arrival and
giggle-when-I-was-gone.
They could hope for their
“maybe later at the–”
where I’d never ever be. And so
it was nothing, nothing at all
until one day on the bus I
looked at a girl and she looked at me
till she looked away uncomfortably
and got off the bus.
Only then did I recall
the man who’d scared me off
with that same hunger on that same bus,
and thus became clear
what was ever clear to a girl:
Men will ever be menacing,
and I will ever be of them.
a poem with a whip-lash ending