Despised

by Brett Rutherford

I sit,
a solitary diner
in a Chelsea Chinese
restaurant.

The loud-
mouthed manager
kitchen-bellows
to anyone who hears:

“Two men come in together,
no service for them.
I know what they’re up to,
don’t want their kind in here.
Who wants to touch a plate
they’ve eaten from?
I have to wear gloves
just to use the subway.”

I eat no more. I pay;
I leave no tip.
If I spoke up, I’d only learn
how much kung fu they know,
or how adept they are
with those heavy-handled
cleavers. Some day
my withering contempt
will find its way to the page.

Outside, it is dusk.
The after-rain light
makes everyone I pass
especially handsome.

Passing, I smile at one.
He saw me coming.
His eyes bulge out.
The spit he’d saved
for the last three blocks
in need of a target,
flies out toward me.

No one is safe
in this plague-feared city.

The Men on Central Park West, 1969

by Brett Rutherford

Perhaps I look too wild,
too out of the woods,
too much a hippie for them,
the men who every night
fill nearly every bench
on Central Park West.

Walk if you dare, from
Seventy-Second to Eightieth,
Dakota to the Museum,
as hundreds of eyes size
you up and down, and one,

if you are lucky, will nod.
The place is an open secret.
No business strolling there
except for “friends of Dorothy.”

Doormen across
the street ignore us,
while dowagers frown
from the upper windows.

Sometimes, from the Dakota’s
luxury tower,
a grand piano rills
and thunders over us.
Horowitz? Rubinstein?
Who knows? Our strolls
encompass much city lore,
from Rosemary’s Baby’s nursery
to the museum’s dinosaurs.

Once you’ve been seen
and gain a nodding
acquaintance with regulars,
they soon enough confide
what places are safe, or not,
and whom to trust, or not.

Some, eager to please,
go home with almost anyone.
Others, behind
some imaginary monocle,
look down in scorn on all
who are not Apollos, perfect
in form and fashion.

As midnight approaches,
the police sweep by.
The loungers vanish
like bats and crickets.
Trees hum with conspiracy.
Something goes on
amid the bushes,
but I am not sure what.

One of the last,
as he takes up his umbrella,
confides to me:
“We bother no one;
they leave us alone.
You might meet anyone here,
bankers and diplomats,
actors, composers, and poets,
the upper crust on down
to the lowest of the low.
Stonewall may have happened,
but not to us.”