unrevised poem I never sent to him

Hemophilia

for Tim

He was the first Hasidic Jew I had ever laid eyes on.
His fly was open as we walked together toward the park.

I think we are all walking around with our pitiful
flies open. And we are all hemophiliacs

bleeding from it. I can’t stop it. The basement is flooded
with my phone calls to you to say that the peppers were crying here,
the peppers were crying at the co-op today and the world is a mirror.

But no one is on the phone right now; they’ve come down
to the Madison Square Park of a hot summer; they would all like
a little sip of us. You are somewhere among these cottony powerlunches.

You are in sandals, snake in the grass,
belly becoming pillow.

I can’t stop shopping in New York City.
There never was a sale I wouldn’t have bought you at.

The city without you makes me feel Hasidic
and I abstemiously abstain from carving my hand
into a hand for you to hold

but fold it like a block of wood in pocket shroud
until that one day on which we can speak to gentiles.

I’ll clasp your hand on our Bedford Ave.
and ask you to pray—but only if you are you.

And we’ll never be closer.