Roy Jacobstein

Piano in Melanesian Pidgin is big black box with teeth, 
you hit him, he cry. Must take forever to reach the end 
of the sentence in Pago Pago. And why is Pago Pago 
pronounced Pango Pango, like it rhymes with tango? 
Where did that n go? If it's true the tango was invented 
in Argentina a century ago, why's their economy 
such a mess today and when will the Mothers 
of the Plaza de Mayo get justice? All over the world 
women are named for what blooms—Daisy, Iris, 
Dahlia, Lily, Rose—but no man is named for a flower, 
which explains a lot about human history. Lady Day 
always wore a white gardenia in her hair, even though 
she wasn't allowed up the elevator with white folk. 
The Infanta of Castille may be the answer to the conundrum 
of London's tube stop, Elephant and Castle, whose origin 
otherwise-like ours-is an enigma, a vortex of mystery 
that must perplex even the most jaded urban commuter. 
I know it does me, these mornings when a humid breeze 
bodes another scorcher in the City of Brotherly Love. 
Wasn't Poor Richard lucky not to get himself electrocuted 
flying his kites into those lightning storms, so later 
he could have all his amorous escapades in Paris? A bad 
bounce last night caromed me into the Emergency Room 
with a busted clavicle. No sweat, you'll be shooting hoops 
again in no time the intern opined, pulling her figure-
of-eight brace taut against my chest. But who can hear 
the word hoops without immediately seeing that little blond girl 
rolling her hoop up the ochre umber burnt sienna street 
in Giorgio di Chirico's famous painting that portends 
the rise of fascism in Italy according to art historians 
because the scene is a rigid geometry of arc and angle 
and her face is unseen, and though she seems carefree 
in the Tuscan sun, she's rolling her big innocent hoop 
into the looming shade. 


Copyright © Roy Jacobstein All rights reserved

Indiana Review, 2004
LITERATURE: Reading Fiction, Poetry and Drama
          (DiYanni, R., ed., Mc-Graw-Hill, 2006) 
Campbell Corner Featured Poem, 2007