Midnight Lessons

• Day the War Begins
• Fairy Spell
• Fences
• Parade Poem Overheard in my Editor's Note
• Quem Quaeritis
• Salem Revisited
• Surveillance
• Teacher Walks at Midnight in Rural America
• Telling
• This Boy
• View From My Study
• When You Can't Do Your Algebra

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                       8 Fences *
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                       * 8 * 8 *  * 8 *     *8  *    *
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After closing his hardware store,
Dad would let my five buddies and me
hold hands in a chain
as the first one touched the sample strand
of barbed wire,
which electrified a little, then a little more,
then lots, right through our chain,
until one of us screamed.

Dad would turn it off
while we all laughed and asked to try again. 

That was in white Alabama
in 1943, during WW2,
when we bought our war bonds,
unquestioningly sat in the front of the bus,
and had not yet heard of other cattle prods
nor understood electrocution. 

I'll still mind your children, 
but a teacher deserves some privacy, really! 

Besides, you haven't earned the right to know. 

Arthur won't tip you off: 
he will not limp a wrist, lisp, 
carry a Gucci bag, make cucumber sandwiches, 
or collect candles and porcelain. 
If you watch, he will pass me 
looking straight ahead. 

Don't stop reading now, dears. 
Why must I stand with my head in these stocks 
if you're not going to watch and heckle. 

-- Louie Crew 

Mary could not focus but fretted.
The professor had destroyed for her
Marvel's "two amorous birds of prey"
when he asked Philip,
"Have you ever seen two buzzards do it?" 

With hand folded protectively
Philip monitored the professor's pitch and pinkie.
Jane wondered whether Philip
used her tricks to get a grade.
"Sex is truth, truth sex," she emended
as she indexed the bottom of her bag,
searching for chewing gum. 

Katherine scribbled the reference
for a spondee she'd just noticed 
for her term paper. 

The professor stared at a Greyhound
as it turned the corner one flight below.
Tourists glanced as if unready for reality. 

"Faggot!" over the transom broke the spell. 

I walked to see the lightning wound the east.
Half a moon filled the clearer dark behind me.
The village fountain spurted higher than
         one I'd seen at Tivoli.
Above the splash, I heard the cars,
          one by one, till six had revved,
jerked to a stop, and screeched again.
          The teenaged drivers shouted,
"Louise!" "Sissy! "Queer!"
          as if part of a Roman nightmare. 

Oblivious, the jagged eastern dancer
          entertained the half-winked moon
for five silent minutes,
          as I sat on the damp edge of the fountain,
newer, less romantic, than the Italian one,
          fitted with mechanical gushers
for these level plains. 

"Hi, doc!" called an elderly colleague
          from his dark sedan
as he waited for a green light
          to drive his mistress home. 

The east fully scarred,
          I retraced my steps.
My fairy powers activated more engines.
         Adolescent hecklers each season
sprout as predictably as pubes. 

"Faggot!" another rehearsed through his beer
          to impress his date
parked in the truck in a dark lot.
          "Georgia. HJV 925. County Peach."
I memorized as I neared. 

"Do you have anything to say to me?"
            I said with my huskiest voice. 

One boy mumbled,
           "Naw, I ain't said nothing." 

"Does anyone have anything to say to me?" 

"Git outa here.
           Nobody's botherin you,
ya nigger-loving, ass-licker faggot!"
           the original mustered. 

His tremolo freed me this time.
             Back home hot pis glued my pants. 

Last week, for a lark, I said to a student,
"Son, this comma should go over there,"
and he did not blink as he emended.
Suddenly I realized that his dad could be 5-8 years
my junior. I had thought him and me fellow bachelors. 

Dad called Thursday to complain
that Mother twice last week 
arose at 2 or 3 a.m. to cook supper.
Fifty years ago she was head bookkeeper at the bank. 

Even after I jog seven miles in the snow,
sometimes my arthritic index finger 
can't steady a pencil. 

A sociologist I read last summer 
gives me only 8 more days of middle age
--"Young, 21-32; Middleaged, 33-44; Old, 45+"--
arbitrary trifurcation of the laboring years. 

It's not the novelty but the frequency of "S" that troubles.

For years and years after I balded early, at 23,
I got only very infrequent subtotals. Just now,
they plop up almost daily, as I soak in the tub
or drowse through the news. 

Of course, the really scary diacritic is not "S" but "T".

We took time out only for meals,
          some beer, or a swim,
and did not tire at all,
          nor push to finish
or to prove anything.
          We were just being
24 and 21, both tan, both horny. 

How very private we were about it all. 

Beside the pool
          we argued who would 
make the World Series,
          who would take Wimbledon.
We girded our lust 
          for the short while
as effortlessly as we had turned off
          the fan until we returned. 

Not once did we even dream
          our room was bugged,
that our every private groan and giggle
          was broadcast in the crowded room,
that they would delete
          only our snores 
and the silence of our sleep
          --material too regular,
too routine, to unnecessary
           to build the D.A's case
against us. Sodomy. 

It's the 1990s, America. Still you intimidate
bachelor sons and unwed daughters, even into their fifties,
with pleas for more and more grandchildren.
Still you train your offspring
to be fruitful and multiply with a vengeance. 

It's the 1990s, and still you feel damned
if just the body plumbing is matched differently
when your children finally learn to love,
and profanely you keep turning on the light. 

When will you grow old gracefully, Uncle Sam and Aunt Jemima?
When will you free your gay children from your unlove?
When will you stop exploiting their style, their grace, 
                and their art,
while consigning to a Cinderella attic
all who do not kiss the hetero frog? 

Your fairies are growing wings, America,
quite beyond your expectations.
Your fairies' wands are empowered
and by their magic your dullness stands exposed,
your catholicity nothing but a bingo club,
your politics only a stormtrooper's boot camp.

You're dull, hetero America.
You need a bath and a dab of cologne,
a mystery cruise down your alleys,
wearing our disguise of sequined drag,
snorting a quean's giggle
as you try to discover where your soul has gone. 

All afternoon, reacting to each student paper,
I will suggest that the next topics be on earlier wars,
defining holocaust and cataclysm,
not hearing the four horsemen. 

The pretty birds have all flown south.
Only we plainer sorts will survive this winter. 

Hey, Louie, I'm gonna kill you.
I listened to your program, you faggot.
I'm gonna beat your fucking face
if I ever see you. You hear me!? 

I ain't no fucking faggot.
I kick your junky fucking ass.
Goodbye.