Joel Lewis

THE CURE

I knock at the mystery door and it opens

& there’s Stan Getz in a lovely cantaloupe polo shirt

the inevitable drink in hand, inviting me in:

“You’re Jewish right? I can tell.

You’ve got that open smile.” Welcome to my

mishpocheh, Stan. Kenny Barron playing solo piano up from the tape deck.

He shows me his latest album: “Stan Getz:

The Business of Visitation.” featuring Chet Baker on ham sandwich.

“It ties in so well with your interest in Gnosticism” I said.

The faint lettering of his air quotes seemed

like a geologic gesture: “Beautiful things

seem to come out of nowhere, but they don’t.”

He reached into a desk drawer for a Chesterfield.

“’Trane once said about me:’ Face it we all like to sound like that if we could,”

he paused as he gently blew out a smoke ring,

“but when I’m off I think:’ I don’t want to be the Jewish Lester Young.’”

AFTER PO CHU-I

Liberty Enlightening the World drifts

past my glasses, paced by Stan Getz’s

languid iPod take on “Tenderly”

& framed by Upper New York Bay’s

grisaille morning exterior.

Ten years of this particular

and vivid waterfront correspond

to the normal work week tension.

This afternoon, an elected official

will hand me a certificate

suitable for framing

recognizing my service to the people

of the approaching pear-shaped island

While I daydream those unwritten poems

floating through the Narrows

and down into the Atlantic Trench.

EAST OF THE SUN (& WEST OF PUNXSUTAWNEY)

They stick that tiny top hat

onto that scared rodent’s head

& the citizens of very interior Pennsylvania are delighted

that they too prefer the visible to the obvious.

As I was fiddling with my brand new uppers, I checked out my kind

of advent calendar, “Prestige Records 1950’s All-Stars”, & so happy birthday

Stan Getz on the day we jokingly reenact

the leftover lunch meat of Pagan Europe.

Getz, at his most sublime, seemed playing his audiences dreams:

masculine lushness dappled with bay rum aftershave.

He also did interesting things like bring the bossa nova

to the pre-Beatle masses, firing sidemen for farting on the bandstand

& holding up a Rexall’s with a water pistol. Drug-addled Stan failed at that

as the cashier ignored the junk jittery goniff to wait on an elderly gent.

Still, that ‘incredibly lovely sound’ stays in the air of this seccessionist grey morning.

It makes me wistful for Lucky Strikes, gabardine suits & cracked ice melting.

Asked by reporter Edward R. Murrow for the secret to his sound,

Stan sighed as he replied, “When I see things through my eyes,

I see things.”

LATE NOVEMBER, STATEN ISLAND

Foggy St. George sleeps the sleep

of late morning sloth

& there go the men with boyish haircuts.

Now a cop car parks on Slosson Terrace,

idling for those possessed by hidden agendas.

“The sun never enters my dreams,” says

a woman to her daughter clutching

a Top Tomato bag as they board

a Totenville bus. A peddler hawks

mini-Ganeshas in front

of the browning field minor league stadium

in advance of an evening festival.

Big orange Ferryboat Marchi drifts into Slip 2.

Two hours before: a Mesopotamia of advancing ankles.

Now old gents eat their pizzas into relief maps of Crete

before tossing them into the harbor.

The flags atop borough hall flap

to the beat of a new round of breeze.

I’ve been out here a long time

mildly defending the honor

of minor characters & their mild situations

& now moving along in the face of need,

cattycorner from the old lighthouse depot.

STEP LIGHTLY

Debark off the Sufferen-bound train

Garrett Mountain as the limit on my sight

& the stairs to the street a plunge to a city

where people have given up on space

putting their money on living through time

& where beggars try a novel take on pale face moi

“Can you help me out? I need 63 cents to get to Paramus

& nobody here speaks English!”

A beggar in a strange land gets himself a dollar bill.

The man in Paterson who can buy his children

Happy Meals & still have change in his pockets

is a little aristocrat & charged up

on Cianci Street cappucinno I pass

the Lou Costello Memorial

then stride uphill to the Great Falls.

No little lyric miracles today.

Boxing Day someplace else in the world

& could that be Clifford Brown’s “Sandu”

coming from the speakers of the green jalopy

parked by the entrance to Libby’s Lunch?

© Read Myles





Joel Lewis's most recent books are North River Rubdown (Accent Editions,2013) & Surrender When Leaving Coach (Hanging Loose, 2012). He is currently at work on a long poem project concerning the Hudson Palisades called "The True People", with sections published in "House Organ" and the Spring 2013 Blazevox journal. He lives on the high ground of Hoboken,N