by Geer Austin

Goodbye

My name is Jérôme, and I live near
the Avenue du Président Kennedy, you said.

Your hair was green so I asked
you to stay. Yeah but I got a ticket to fly,

you said. We were in my apartment
on Mulberry Street, watching hipsters clomp

up the block. A tricolored airplane awaited you.
I heard the yelp of its wheels on the tarmac

at Charles de Gaulle, each withstanding pressure
like a ganglion cyst. Your voice smelled of Vetiver,

the cologne you sprayed on your neck
to disguise your fear. When you took off your shirt

your red-striped chest looked defenseless.
I ran my fingers along your scars,

kissed them and tongued dried sweat
from your nipples. You tasted yellow

like a warning, but I didn’t slow down.
I’ll be your defibrillator, I said.

Paris interrupted our saga, until I crossed
the Atlantic, flapping my arms, a woodchuck in flight.

The last time I saw you, you wore a hospital gown,
your ass exposed, the Seine gray out the window.

1980

The year of the great divide
was a leap year. It was a time
when you were maybe five years apart
and three thousand miles gone. It was a time
when congressmen scammed, women
were beheaded in the Middle East
for minor infractions like driving a car,
and I was carless in Little Italy,
lying on my loft-bed with the air conditioner
running and fireworks exploding
in the street. There was a glaring
of red, white and blue, another presidential
campaign. My best friends lived
within blocks of my apartment. My
cabal. They painted abstractions. I wrote.
We drank cocktails at local dives. One time
I threw up in the men’s room, not because
of alcohol, because of grief, and my boyfriend
of the moment left me for another roll
of the dice. Our government started a census.
Did they count us? The winner of the marathon
was a fraud. Maybe a metaphor? The Mariel
Boatlift brought us Reinaldo Arenas. Thank you,
Cuba. Black lives got extinguished by police officers
found Not Guilty. Pac-Man showed up yellow
and gobbling, aliens I suppose, and my handsome
heterosexual neighbor spent hours at the arcade.
And—bombs, bombs, bombs. The devout crushed
while viewing the Pope. Yet there was a Trudeau
in charge of Canada. There was solidarity,
there was hope, the year was a round number.
And Madonna had moved to New York. She waited
on us at Lucky Strike. Bold style, bright colors,
gigantic hair. Was it optimism or dread?
In my neighborhood, we wore blue-black hair
and tight black jeans. Reagan won the election;
my cabal swallowed cognac and snorted cocaine
to deal with the aftershock. Blondie sang Call Me,
and since we lived near CBGB’s, we dialed.
Then on a cold December day, somebody shot
John Lennon.