Poetry: Selections from Peter Mladinic

Corridor

Let’s not be lazy, let’s say her name:

Gwendolyn.  Don’t be like calling a woman

Stacy when her real’s name’s Anastasia

but you’re too lazy to say the lovely name.

What wrong with America? Americans 

are lazy?  No, that’s not it, but call her

Gwendolyn, her full name, Gwendolyn 

from Switzerland, sixteen, chestnut hair,

brown eyes like jewels, skin caramel, 

mouth of haunting curves, her lithe frame,

in a long off-white dress on a summer day,

supple, alluring, but just a kid, a child.

 

A child sitting on a bench against a wall

in a corridor. Sun through glass doors.

What Gwendolyn looks like naked is okay

for another sixteen year old to dwell on,

but not you, a man in America in 1999.

Dwell on Gwendolyn wearing nothing 

under her long dress, they’ll take you away

in handcuffs. There are laws. Don’t mess

with a minor. And that’s your law for you.

She’s a child, you don’t dwell on children.

If you want to fixate, fixate on an adult,

but respect their space. Do unto others,

 

mutual consent. Adults being inappropriate 

with kids, there’s no excuse. Lock ‘em up!

But why would someone be?  Out of control.

Figure a way to be in control. You can’t 

trespass another person’s space, much less 

a child’s.  You were a child.  A child touched

inappropriately?  You don’t want to say

sodomized, or raped.  Molested sounds like

animal fur, the fur of, say, a possum. You’ve 

never touched, or skinned a possum. 

What about rage?  Keep it in or let it out 

in the right place, the right time. Keep it,

 

hold on to rage. But don’t go breaking glass

doors, or tearing up that cushioned bench

Gwendolyn sat on, her back to the tiled wall,

lovely as a person could look. If you’re 

going to dwell on anything, dwell on beauty,

the beauty of a cat, even a postage stamp.

There’s plenty of ugliness.  Remember 

that time, those times. Remember, too,

sitting with others, seeing, hearing, feeling

rage a woman was “acting out,” tears,

sobs, her whole body beating a post with

some phallic like object, hitting the post

 

over and over in a frenzy, in Edina, 1977.

You wonder did it help, letting the rage out.

You wonder how an adult could dwell on

a child. Never say never.  Why not?  I will

never be inappropriate with a child. You

mean never even look at a child in a way

to make the child uncomfortable, 

but inappropriate is vague.  But rage,

picture a roiling, raging river, picture rage

in you.  I see a road I like being on, a long

road with no traffic. I look down that road.

Door to the Past

The blade in the musical

film Top Hat,

“For the woman the kiss, 

for the man the sword” 

comes to a point in a daguerreotype: you

bloused, at your side a sheathed saber,  

 

Years later, a black fedora. 

A silver watch chain 

arced across a black vest, at the top of 

stairs; behind you, a door. 

A pocket watch your weapon, 

mine silence, I wanted to walk though 

the door,

but not badly enough to slay you. 

Jehovah’s Witnesses

Bill, my neighbor in Woodleaf Apartments,

and I, were doing laundry in The Tub,

a mile from Woodleaf, and two ladies came in 

with pamphlets, wanting to talk. 

As I folded whites at the counter, 

she was at my elbow, the pushier of the two, 

short brown hair, 

(red tint, little curls), that looked fried.

A French accent. A petite sixty something. 

“Go away.” 

She called either Bill or I a rude young man. 

Maybe he was at the counter 

and I taking sheets from the dryer, 

or we were both at the counter. 

She did say “man,” not men. 

We took it as a compliment.

We had a good chuckle. 

It was the biggest event that ever happened 

to me in The Tub.

Bill, an airplane pilot, liked car races. 

He was tall, and grouchy. 

That lady made our day. 

He lived across from Linda. 

I could look out her door, 

and across the trees and walkway, 

see Bill’s door. 

I don’t know why Linda liked me but not him. 

A nurse in a hospital, 

one day she manicured my nails 

better than they’d ever been done before.

Engaged to be married to a Rockefeller?

Todd, she called him, Toddy.

She was “pulling my leg” about that, I think.

She wouldn’t have put up with Frenchie

for long. Well, maybe longer than Bill and I. 

I never see her or the French lady, 

but from time to time I see Bill, Sundays

at breakfast in The Iron Skillet. 

I won’t forget 

the French lady’s “rude young man,” or Linda.

Carousel Horses 

Today is carousel horses.

Today is funeral home matchbooks. 

I’m thinking of the carousel horse Miriam,

Guy’s ex, rides in Strangers on a Train

as she’s stalked by Bruno, 

and the carousel at Palisades Park 

in whose shadow my friend John

one Sunday night was knocked to one knee,

having picked a fight with the wrong person.

Five years later he overdosed 

and was dumped in a lot in the City. 

Today is a black matchbook 

with a gold palm tree from the Riptide Club

 in Atlantic City where palms don’t thrive, 

a red matchbook from Small’s Paradise,

a blue from the Baby Grande, 

(a 125th St. bar), a Waffle House

matchbook with a stack of waffles,

and a heroin matchbook a junkie

left on a table in a Burger King

with No Smoking signs on walls. 

I’m thinking of Miriam, 

the dark-frame glasses 

she’d looked so great in, lying in grass. 

after Bruno strangled her.

I’m thinking of John’s corpse 

in a lot between tall buildings; 

maybe he died in the car,

a Camaro, a Mustang?, that dumped him

and drove away.

I see the blue matchbook on the bar 

at the Baby Grande and hear Sinatra’s 

 “Summer Wind” on the juke.  

At Small’s brass rails gleam. 

At Palisades Amusement Park

in the shadows of horses, and riders 

going ‘round, I’m thinking of John, 

down on one knee, with a hand on his jaw, 

a startled look in his eyes, unable to see 

the train wreck that would end him.

Peter Mladinic's most recent book of poems, Maiden Rock, is available from UnCollected Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.