Poets in a Chelsea Brownstone

Hostess. I remember her hunched shadow

on the frosted glass

of the sliding French door,

as we poets read,

and the door slid silently,

just ever so much,

enough for the thin arm

and age-knobbed wrist

to enter, to place

on the refreshment table,

without one ice-clink sound,

the sweating-cool pitcher

of lemonade.

Most of the eager poets

assembled here,

tracking who-knows-what

on her parquet floor,

shuffling their papers and notebooks,

awaiting their turn to read,

did not know her name.

The elegant brownstone

they come to weekly

is just a place,

one among many that come and go

in The Village Voice listings,

places that tolerate

the disheveled artists,

word-crazed, impractical,

the ones who will never

earn a penny.

As I read in my turn,

she listened there

behind the veil of glass,

a listening that leaned

on every consonant I uttered,

a keen pre-echo

to every vowel.

Oh, she heard us.

We did not know her name,

or how the upstairs rooms lodged

a succession of broken souls,

her “causes,”

knew not that we’d been adopted, too.

One day, with a friend, I saw her,

emerging from the brownstone,

sun-walking Ninth Avenue,

behind some tugging hound

misfortune had doubtless thrust

upon her charity.

The warm day reddened

her parlor-pale face.

My friend tells me,

“That’s Mrs. Tanner, you know.

That’s Auntie Mame!”