Poetry Annual 1998	O Y S T E R   B O Y   R E V I E W   [ 8 ]
	P O E M   / 1 / 2 /
Michael Rumaker
B O S T O N   T E A   P A R T Y
5 AM Room 1408 Park Plaza Hotel at my window city twinkling for miles sky beginning to brighten one lone star aloft only the yellow street lights flashing all over Boston John Wieners sleeping or pattering about in 5th floor walkup 44 Joy Street the shady side of Beacon Hill Behind the State Capitol We are both invisble fags John greeting me 9 AM yesterday morning in cramped vestibule naked to the waist not all invisible: big belly now a split nipple on his right tit I'd never noticed before Haven't seen him for years Haven't ever seen him in Boston where he's always "Jack" John's mother dead John's sister dead John's brother-in-law doles him bucks from welfare checks for smokes and eats Where'd he get those burnt sienna trousers? only John knows A letter in the mailbox John ripping it open to see if there's a check inside There isn't But he goes to read at Brown in a month "400 dollars for 3 hours" so that's something Hard climb to 5th floor under roof apartment has the look of all the places John has ever lived: Lower East Side; Leavenworth Street, Nob Hill (another shady side) jumbled, rooms-for-transients look John smart: we're all just passing through "Why're you here?" It sounds from his lips like the question of the meaning of life: Why are any of us here? I'm on a panel "Gay and Lesbian Fiction Writers: Before the Boom and After" at OutWrite 95 where lots of queer writers are visible John not invited, says, "Maybe we could go there for tea?" forgets it a minute later "forgetting everything," he says, "would you like a hot chocolate?" as always, courteous to a fault, and forgets that too I invite John to Arlington Street grand hotel invite him 3 times, he keeps forgetting "Outreach? Outline? My typewriter's broken— I write by pen" Barefoot John pattering about showing me his Lincoln Kirstein (b. 1907) Movement and Metaphor with warped rose-colored cover he picked up in a flea market which feeds him this instant reading bits aloud through horn-rimmed bottle-thick glasses temples missing so that he holds them pinched between fingers like lorgnettes reading in deliberate buttery Boston voice words shaped in air like smoke from the Kent he puffs by open window courteous of my at last tar-free lungs Cold Boston air blowing in ice everywhere in streets below gray and glassy in cemeteries on way over names long gone from slate stones rubbed clean by north Atlantic winds cemeteries in Boston so much deader than elsewhere John gulping high-powered aspirins pulling other bottle out opening new one before old one gone John concerned I not bump my head on a slant beam (like truth) that appears to be holding up the whole apartment all of Boston the world "You are angularity, Mike . . ." What're you doing, John? "I don't write anymore . . . I'm a dilettante . . ." is very sure of that "You are all angles My typewriter's broken— I write by pen" 1988 poem (to a woman) in his handwriting lying smack center in musty seat of dining room chair Another woman, he says, stole one of his poems and published it in The New Yorker; he told me summer 1965 the folks at State University at Buffalo were trying to gas him in a basement classroom Who knows? 2 old invisible fags rattling disconnected connections talking in a rat's nest of an apartment the shady side of Beacon Hill 2 old gay boys talking past each other now I want to talk about Charles, Duncan— old Black Mountain days John: "It's best I don't get near again" He reads Kirstein aloud, the book, like all John's books, jammed with mag cutouts: photos of Edna St. Vincent Millay Jayne Mansfield before decapitation Billie Holiday, Sophia Loren, his paperdolls curious little origami mag foldings glued to the inserts secret (sacred) only to John like other mag cutouts on the wall like on all the walls of all the places I've seen him live Shows me fancy Canadian literary mag with his 50s journal entries stuffed with more origami dolls wants me to see contents of proposed 4th Measure (never done) points to ending with "Michael Rumaker's letters" we grin, we grin past each other 2 invisible old cocksuckers in a shabby still-1955 apartment up in another Boston sky as I'm sitting here now 14th floor in another sky on Arlington Street 5:25 AM now delicate clouds under the one star another smaller star shining beneath it Frank O'Hara is dead Marlon Riggs is dead John was born in 1934 he wrote "A poem for cocksuckers" 6.20.58 Robert Gluck at OutWrite 95 flashing color photos of new blond baby son naked, uncut (complimented him on keeping the foreskin) I am this morning 63 years old
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