Your blood wrong

Laurie
Your blood wrong
Starbucks, November 26, 2007

I found the phrase, “your blood wrong,” in a poem by Catherine Wing, my friend, and I experimented with her technique of word associations. After a while I saw that, unconsciously, I was evoking Richard as a diabetic and as a prodigal son about to visit his family in England.

You are lying on the pavement, and your blood is green. You are a tree on the lam, a karate chop. The sidewalk is paved, the pavement blindsided. You skateboard down the fire escape, past the door jamb and the jambon. No one thinks about the lamb.

You are lying on Madison Avenue on one of the busiest shopping days. People step around you in ankle boots. “Pull up to the curb or pull a fast one,” they say. “Come to the Casbah or come clean.” You shiver. A chalk outline rings the crime scene, and you feel recognized—Lana Turner in Schwab’s Drugstore, thumbnailed and fingered.

Your blood is mint while your father’s voice is a crowbar. The house is burning, but you only now smell smoke. “To be honest,” you say, “I have a plan.”

You always wanted to be wrong blooded. Brando and Belmondo and Bogart splayed out on the street. You can't get out of your way you are so straight as the gate, so gates of hell, so hell of a guy. You so innocent as a bug, so bumblebee making money honey, and as your throat clears the buzz and as you lift your bag and brush off your tail, the crowd parts. It’s warm for December because the past is burning. You inhale New York with a sense of occasion, asking for tea. “It was the sugar,” you say, “a little high, a little low.” It's hard to adjust when you’re day for night, when you’re wrong for right, and you shoot a smile of surrender, feeling your tree limb and your pavement pound. “What’s in your blood,” your father says, “is out of our hands.”