Kathi Wolfe
CHEESESTEAK AT PAT'S
Philadelphia, 1950*
Rabbis peeking at boxing scores behind prayer books,
priests nipping wine and saying their rosaries,
pastors dreaming of pin-ups and praying,
told Rita and Stan they should not wed.
Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage
but not for a Jew and gentile, everyone said,
your children will be mongrels. What would God
want with them?
Doctors in lab coats, more intimate with test tubes
than with their wives,
Aunt Rose and Uncle Tony who'd argued all their lives,
Mr. S. who'd caught Stan skipping shop in high school,
Miss B., Rita's nemesis in confirmation class,
the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker,
told Rita and Stan they should not wed.
Love and marriage go together like salt and pepper,
but not with diabetes, everyone said,
you couldn't have children. Your union
would be unhappy ever after.
But Rita and Stan, savoring cheesesteak at Pat's,
licking the gooey sauce off each other's fingers,
lips soaked in ketchup, Cheezwhiz and fried onions,
were, for at least that day, immune from naysayings.
Love and marriage go together like cheese and steak
they knew, and the happily-ever-after would be too bland,
too dry, leaving no juicy drippings to lick in its wake.
* * *
THE GREEN LIGHT
for my mother
If only
you really had eyes in the back of your head
as you told me when I, age 5,
knew these eyes would stop mean giants,
evil queens, even the Wicked Witch herself-
dead in their tracks-with one hit of your X-ray vision.
If only,
you really were 17, as you told me you
were before I know what any number meant,
instead of 36, immersed in The Great Gatsby,
bridge, housework and actuary tables.
The life expectancy of diabetics, on average,
is limited, you read. It's not so bad, you said,
I'll go out like Keats. The great writers
leave when they can still think of a good exit line.
If only,
on that sultry summer day in the Manhattan
TV studio, palms sweating, heart pounding,
your memory hadn't failed like an overloaded circuit.
Who wrote The Great Gatsby? asked the quiz-master.
Hemingway, you murmured. I'll think about
that answer for the rest of my life,
you'd say staring off into the distance
like Gatsby looking for the green light, that fur coat
I almost won is always draped around my shoulders.
Kathi Wolfe's work has appeared in Gargoyle, Potomac
Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Not Just Air, Wordgathering,
Breath & Shadow and other publications. Her chapbook, "Helen Keller Takes the Stage: The
Helen Keller Poems" was published in 2008 by Puddinghouse Press. Wolfe has received a Puffin Foundation grant and
been awarded poetry residencies by Vermont Studio Center. Her poem "Blind Ambition" received
Honorable mention in the 2007 Passager Magazine poetry contest. She was a winner of the 2010
Moving Words Poetry Competition. |