EMIGRE


That apartment on Stanford, just
south of the shotgun shacks in Freetown

and east of the Montrose cruisers,
we lived in a brick duplex above

Mr. Williams and his suspenders
who hid behind the blinds except

on rent day when his soft white flesh
ventured into the sun to collect

his check, 300 bucks got us
a second floor kitchen and front

room connected by a bedroom
and two swinging doors that creaked

and flapped like fake applause.
All day you taught in schools and I

worked with accountants -- we drove
home to shrimp and cerveza, gin

and gyros, curry and claret,
lizards basked on the brick balcony

as we burned our skin, at night
wood roaches flew blindly against

the screen door, bumping in the darkness
like the drunk strangers we'd known

in Pittsburgh. At dawn the roosters
crowed and scratched the grass, and

Mexican boys with cars that spelled
Esmeralda and Rosalita

sped down the street begging chicitas
for rides and the baseball lot filled

with men from trucks and shrunken gloves
and every spare moment I hid

behind my desk with my Underwood
propped up on three Houston phone books

writing words in a strange tongue to
satisfy someone in a distant

city, words that betrayed me, words
that I did not even mean, nor

even know that I did not mean,
I was an emigrant to so

many things then, to love, to
myself, to the world around me.