Roodt Eylandt
Baby Shacks aka “The Professor” has just been arrested
for shaking down strip joints on Federal Hill. Ah, Providence,
southern home of the Patriarcas, don’t get me started.
No one here gets four-way stops, but drivers will squeal
to a halt for left-turners or indecisive pedestrians.
To honk is look for a fight as Brown students stroll
blithely in front of locals’ rusty heaps. Nothing’s going
to alter their course while working-class kids, dropping
their r’s, hope to become teachers, God bless them.
Good old Roger Williams holds his thick hand
over this diminutive city, while the Independent Man,
clad in his loose diaper, glowers above the capitol dome.
Below, pose pink and yellow eighteenth-century houses
I want to cut up and devour they’re so charming.
Streets proclaim virtue: Hope, Benefit, Benevolent.
There’s the brick and the water and Ivy League professors
who won’t move out of the way in the cheese aisle
at Whole Foods, plus RISD slicks with their hip
haircuts vs. the ambitious children of immigrants,
the Rhode Island Red, the Foxy Lady, back-room deals,
cousins who’ll take care of it, vomiting fraternities,
little fish shacks (mayonnaise delivery systems),
Dell’s Lemonade, Coffee Milk, Dunkin Donuts,
which all suck (but oh the calamari and quahogs),
the love of summer though in truth it’s a humid stew
with only window-box AC’s, Boston a world away,
as is New York (“I saw the Rockettes once”),
south county vampire stories, South Side drive-bys,
Lyme Disease, chop suey on a roll, plus this cheeseless
pizza with sweet tomato paste, preferably eaten cold,
the ocean state, and it’s true, plus lofts in old mills,
hidden Little Compton, where thrifty Yankee wives
use their husbands’ blood to strengthen their roses,
a “dense state,” commented the Farrelly brothers,
who fit right in. I’ve never seen so many slack-jawed
youths and broken old folks, limping, snaggle-toothed.
I never knew a state so divided one though even
signs in front of homes on the East Side proclaim,
“No copper pipes,” as in please don’t strip the plumbing.
Thief city. Buddy Cianci. Magnificent manicotti.
There’s a time to buy rakes, a time to buy shovels.
On Sundays we’re closed. You should be home anyway.
This is how to spend Christmas and the Fourth of July.
This is how you get married and how you’ll be buried.
Rude Island, smallest state, you’re the beautiful girl
who bellows at the beach “Watch out, you assholes!”
But she’s loyal to her own. I’ve seen women in Barrington
bring their daughters to brush away the stones,
then lay their wreathes of plastic flowers.
In December, some of them string twinkle lights
as if Nana has decked out her new, low home.
And I have contra-danced, hot and happy, with Brownies,
sung Beatles songs in an Irish pub in the Bucket, taken
my pups for the blessing of the animals in Bristol.
Had some fun there, I mean. Fair warning, though:
no salesperson will ever get off the phone to help you.
Who the hell are you anyway? You’re not even family.
Cathleen Calbert’s writing has appeared in Ms., The Nation, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the author of four books of poems: Lessons in Space, Bad Judgment, Sleeping with a Famous Poet, and The Afflicted Girls. Her awards include the 92nd Street Y Discovery Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, the Sheila Motton Book Prize, and the Mary Tucker Thorp Professorship at Rhode Island College.
Baby Shacks aka “The Professor” has just been arrested
for shaking down strip joints on Federal Hill. Ah, Providence,
southern home of the Patriarcas, don’t get me started.
No one here gets four-way stops, but drivers will squeal
to a halt for left-turners or indecisive pedestrians.
To honk is look for a fight as Brown students stroll
blithely in front of locals’ rusty heaps. Nothing’s going
to alter their course while working-class kids, dropping
their r’s, hope to become teachers, God bless them.
Good old Roger Williams holds his thick hand
over this diminutive city, while the Independent Man,
clad in his loose diaper, glowers above the capitol dome.
Below, pose pink and yellow eighteenth-century houses
I want to cut up and devour they’re so charming.
Streets proclaim virtue: Hope, Benefit, Benevolent.
There’s the brick and the water and Ivy League professors
who won’t move out of the way in the cheese aisle
at Whole Foods, plus RISD slicks with their hip
haircuts vs. the ambitious children of immigrants,
the Rhode Island Red, the Foxy Lady, back-room deals,
cousins who’ll take care of it, vomiting fraternities,
little fish shacks (mayonnaise delivery systems),
Dell’s Lemonade, Coffee Milk, Dunkin Donuts,
which all suck (but oh the calamari and quahogs),
the love of summer though in truth it’s a humid stew
with only window-box AC’s, Boston a world away,
as is New York (“I saw the Rockettes once”),
south county vampire stories, South Side drive-bys,
Lyme Disease, chop suey on a roll, plus this cheeseless
pizza with sweet tomato paste, preferably eaten cold,
the ocean state, and it’s true, plus lofts in old mills,
hidden Little Compton, where thrifty Yankee wives
use their husbands’ blood to strengthen their roses,
a “dense state,” commented the Farrelly brothers,
who fit right in. I’ve never seen so many slack-jawed
youths and broken old folks, limping, snaggle-toothed.
I never knew a state so divided one though even
signs in front of homes on the East Side proclaim,
“No copper pipes,” as in please don’t strip the plumbing.
Thief city. Buddy Cianci. Magnificent manicotti.
There’s a time to buy rakes, a time to buy shovels.
On Sundays we’re closed. You should be home anyway.
This is how to spend Christmas and the Fourth of July.
This is how you get married and how you’ll be buried.
Rude Island, smallest state, you’re the beautiful girl
who bellows at the beach “Watch out, you assholes!”
But she’s loyal to her own. I’ve seen women in Barrington
bring their daughters to brush away the stones,
then lay their wreathes of plastic flowers.
In December, some of them string twinkle lights
as if Nana has decked out her new, low home.
And I have contra-danced, hot and happy, with Brownies,
sung Beatles songs in an Irish pub in the Bucket, taken
my pups for the blessing of the animals in Bristol.
Had some fun there, I mean. Fair warning, though:
no salesperson will ever get off the phone to help you.
Who the hell are you anyway? You’re not even family.
Cathleen Calbert’s writing has appeared in Ms., The Nation, The New York Times, The Paris Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the author of four books of poems: Lessons in Space, Bad Judgment, Sleeping with a Famous Poet, and The Afflicted Girls. Her awards include the 92nd Street Y Discovery Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, the Sheila Motton Book Prize, and the Mary Tucker Thorp Professorship at Rhode Island College.