Hot and Cold | Timothy A Robbins

Think about this. A gunslinger who never wore
a ten-gallon, recording a song, his own composition:
I’d do anything to hide your icy deeds. Some say

Hank Williams spilled his ink when his wife had
an abortion shivering alone under the kitchen sink.

Tony Bennett’s cover of this tune is just a slicker
abortion. Think about this. Whitman’s and
Michelangelo’s beards intwined, a battle of white

and red fires that will never be won. Imagine I
cryogenically freeze hell and set heaven ablaze.

Ice to ashes and ashes to ice. Imagine me arranging
a blind date for the Master of the Last Judgment.
“Your life together will begin and end with

rampant fevers.The fevers of the lover of massive
beauty.At 57 you’ll begin to cool and this ragazzo

of 23,a spark of nobility, will hide your limbs
from winter.I picture him at your deathbed. No
longer your solid David,nor your smooth corpse

of the Pieta. Having survived first fever and
abatement, he caressesyour trembling hand,presses

a cool cloth to your forehead.” I write this because
I’m just dumb enough to think I can choose who
I’ll be and who will want me. Think about this.

A street corner I never saw before and would relish
if it weren’t three a.m.; if I weren’t colder than the

remote control I absentmindedly hid in the
fridge last week; if I hadn’t been whisked out into
the snow, clutching my shoes when a trick’s wife

(he claimed) came home early. I am relishing a
scene from a Noel Coward musical I saw before

this improv started. Nelson Eddy and Jeanette
MacDonald ululating on a Strassenecke, a gilded
harp balancingbeside them withfatuousgood

breeding. If I look that outlandish, let’s hopethe
cabby is blind.

Timothy Robbins teaches ESL. He has a B.A. in French and an M.A. in Applied Linguistics. He has been a regular contributor to Hanging Loose since 1978. His poems have appeared in Three New Poets, Slant, Main Street Rag, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Off The Coast and others. His collection Denny’s Arbor Vitae was published in 2017. He lives with his husband of twenty years in Kenosha, Wisconsin, birthplace of Orson Welles. His collection of poems “Carrying Bodies” is to be published in October 2018 by Main Street Rag Press.