Saturday Poetry: Is Your Husband Married?

I'm almost free.  I have one more class and one more final, and time enough to study for it.  This freedom has coincided with the advent of a Spring so long overdue I have a hard time even one day before May Day believing that it won't snow, and that I won't need to rescue my winter coat from the one-of-these-days-I'll-drop-this-stuff-off-at-the-drycleaners bag.  Perhaps this is my personal era of being slow to come around -- slow to realize the season's changed, slow to believe that that asshole is president, slow to ... you get my drift.

Anyway, here's another poem from the unpublished manuscript, Turn Left At The Dead Dog:

There was one man who called her Baby

He said he had been at the Yard since the War

Like all the old guys he was married

And proud of the way he made money

Down on the docks in Red Hook.

All this he told her while eating his lunch.

She’d turned him down three times as he ate lunch

She knows what it means when they call you Baby

They say there are no nice girls in Red Hook

That’s been gospel since before the war.

The only girls left need to make that money

They aren’t even thinking about getting married.

Hello darling, is your husband married?

That’s the first time he asked her to lunch.

Right then he almost offered her money

Just to be his noontime baby.

She was mad enough to go to war

Here in God’s asshole, Red Hook.

Back in the 60’s in Red Hook

When a couple got married

It’s because they believed in making love, not war.

You’d toast over lunch

And wish them a baby

Then slip them some money.

How you get money

Is all that matters in Red Hook.

Get enough so you can pay for the baby.

They say it’s a good thing to get married.

Too bad they only spring for a lunch.

That custom started during the war.

Now, it’s a different kind of war

Otherwise, why would the bait of fast money

Make a girl give it up during lunch?

I know that it’s not just in Red Hook

When girls pretend they are married

You’ll get caught with a baby.