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She counted her money
before we went in,
avenue beside us anxious
with Friday-evening traffic.
Both fourteen, we shared a Newport,
its manila butt salty to our lips.
Inside, from a huge book
of designs and letter styles,
she chose to get "MARY"
in a black, Old English script
on the back of her neck.
The guy who ran the shop
leaned over her for forty minutes
with a needled gun
that buzzed loud
as if trying to get free.
He took her twenty-five dollars
then another ten
for being under age.
Back outside, the sun
dipped behind rooftops,
about to hand the sky over to night.
Lifting her hazel hair,
she asked me to rub
some A&D ointment
on her new tattoo;
my finger glistened in salve
as I reached for her swollen name.
minor characters in somebody else's
melodrama (first appeared in Black Quarterly
by Randall Horton
Hugged against red brick walls,
five o'clock shadowed men
whose brims break
over one eye socket, lean--
knees bent like boomerangs,
whisper incoherently
how heroin swimming through their veins
is gooder than a muthafucka,
words slow dancing each other
to a slur, back pockets dragging
a half-pint of Odessa, the seal popped
since evening rush hour.
On any corner from N to U,
a fast walk and frantic stare
followed by raised index finger
brings a deliberate head nod--
the lingua franca of Ninth Street.
Car trunks unfasten deep
in silk dresses and fresh leather coats.
Inside the after hours joint
down from Birdland,
the strike-straight crack of a cue ball
breaks over Wynton Marsalis' horn.
Women are snake charmed
by wanna be hustlers
who sport gators and swift speech,
promise salvation when nothing
is guaranteed except a dope habit
and these streets, nothing but ghetto life
strung out 24/7-- like a religion.
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