10/1/1978

by Timothy Robbins

I don’t recall when I learned my
man’s DOB, but I am certain it was
the day October became solid.
The first Spanish ships in this
hemisphere are as little on my dry
mind as they are on the soaked
minds of most Americans, the
bank holiday and the impact of
that ancient and controversial find
notwithstanding. My High Holy
Days and my Low Selfish Days

are not partial to the tenth or any
other month. They come and go
as freely as groupies backstage
or up and down hotel halls.
Halloween has never been for me
the proof it is for some gay
boys and girls. The parade is a lump
that crawls, not a baton the Trans
drum majorette hurls at clouds.
Still, I have sliced a mean rug
to the cool Lou Reed hit, staring

at the black-capped biker on the
back of Transformer, at the swipe
of fine raw tan over rough trade
jeans. I saw that the month-long mel-
ancholy was over-welcome to the
melancholy-deficient. Still, for me
it formed a surplus. All the rented
hurt colors reminded me of my high
school living room and the orange
sectional every soul but my young
shade made out on; thin paneling,

light pretending hard to be fire in
a thin plastic hearth. Having arrived
on its first day, you are the month’s
crown prince. Sharing your sight,
I see your loyal subjects, see their
vampire-shaped birthmark; mark
how they soar like witches in a V.
Mowing the stars and trimming my
hedge, they trace our line, our limit,
the link, the brink, the dizzy ledge,
the inseam of a long denim pledge.

Portrait

“Come in drag,” he said.
So I came as Frankenstein.

I know what it’s like to
fight inaccuracies

that lead to new meanings.
I also know what it’s like

to stop fighting. He insists
he was designed like the

glass floor or rather floors
of the Sears or rather

Willis skywalk. He jokes,
“I do my best thinking

(and forgetting) on the john,
my best sleeping, on the

floor.” As a child he was an
expert at losing himself in

placemat mazes waitresses
slipped between the table

and his downturned face
while his dad complained.

His feelings were wobbly
when, twenty years later, his

own son entered the maze
and never came out.

5 Cup Rice Cooker/Warmer

This is our second Tiger JNP.
(The first rests in honor with
its small pink ordinary whites.)
A modest territory around the
cooker’s steam vent gets
polluted with flakes like rice
paper or an aged librarian’s —
a retired mandarin’s skin
skillfully torn from the hand
that commands, barely, the
date stamp and ink brush. Once
a month I apply a warm, damp
cloth to this area, as though
the appliance had my headache
or your tender shoulder.

Extinguished

There was always that one window across
the blacktop, beyond the de facto dog park,

past the lark-less, spark-less crow-streaked
trees; as cavalier about its WE electric bill

as these United States; as loyal to its light
and lies as our two religions combined.

While other parties, crude or refined, petered out,
it partied on. Now it too has gone, not shut but

cut off by the utility company. At last we
are alone. At last even you must admit we

are unseen. A bark-less walk awaits.

BIO

Timothy Robbins is from Indiana. He has a B.A. in French, an M.A. in applied linguistics from Indiana University and has been teaching English as a second language since 1991. He has been publishing poetry since 1980 and has six collections of poetry to his name, the most recent being Florida and Other Waters. He and his husband have been together since 1998. They live in Wisconsin.