Fireworks

Despite lights on in my neighbor’s window,
one floor up and across from my bedroom,
I read mail in my underwear,
standing near my desk, credit card statement in hand.
I stretch my cotton boxer briefs like a fitted sheet on a mattress,
separating folds, allowing the elastic to grow on my thighs,
like rubber bands pushed up forearms or condoms rolled over hard-ons.
My white undershirt fits too tight over ten pounds gained since I quit smoking.
I ignore my belly when it’s covered, especially when lying down.
It’s like a throw pillow under a comforter or laundry lumped
beneath a bedspread to fake out parents checking on teenagers,
like me and my best friend in seventh grade sneaking out at 1 a.m.
to shoot fireworks. We made fake bodies in the sofa bed,
in case his mother woke up.
I see my neighbor through his kitchen window;
he’s watching me while washing dishes.
I continue reading my charges listed for February
and scan the statement for my payment due date.
I hope he’s noticing my black boxer briefs.
I only wear one brand because I know how they fit.
It’s familiar like this neighbor, one floor up,
smoking a cigarette, standing in his bathtub;
I know where he is because I often see him shower—
his shampoo and rinse through a partially opened window.
I only see mid-chest to above his nose, but still it’s exciting,
like unwrapping condoms or shooting rubber bands, like sneaking out
at 1 a.m. to play with bottle rockets. He’s done washing dishes, staring
through my window. I imagine him in his underwear,
leaning on the kitchen counter, or naked from the waist down,
hands moving below the window sill.

 

Cartoon Bears and Cotton Briefs

Following my hand wave and evening “hello,”
the doorman looks up from his latest drawing,
like a grade-school doodler called on in a classroom,
when a teacher asks a question about Mesopotamia,
the river-valley civilization between the Tigris and Euphrates.
I press the elevator button. A couple enters the lobby,
a red-head girl in her twenties and a blonde guy carrying a pizza.
I see his tightie-whitie waistband above his low-cut denim waistline.
I’m holding a roll of gift-wrap paper decorated with animated characters—
multiple pastel colored bears playing in clouds and tossing stars.
I stare at the numbers lighting up, signifying each floor from twelve to one.
The doorman mentions holes in the street out front, shooting steam
like Mount St. Helens close to blowing up. Con Ed is working on it.
I think it’s been twenty years since that volcano last erupted.
I imagine lava in the sewers disintegrating rats and garbage,
or valves like truck tires leaking boiling hot water,
borderline launching half of 47th Street,
like mines set off beneath asphalt and traffic.
The elevator door opens, and I say “good night,”
following the pair inside. The girl asks which floor I want
to which I reply “five.” She says she likes my wrapping paper.
Her boyfriend with the pizza just stares at the ceiling.
“I bought it at Rite Aid. There were more rolls in the card aisle.”
She smiles, remembering bedspreads covered in cartoon bears,
her flannel nightgowns she wore as a child in the 80s.
And I picture my fingers undoing the button on his jeans,
feeling the warmth of his bulge through white cotton briefs,
as I kneel below and press my face into it,
like an ancient ritual not covered in history textbooks,
maybe child games in Babylonia, naked boys in the Hanging Gardens.
Crayon-colored bears fall from the sky, while monster-truck tires
are shot past Hawaii. I need an accident in an elevator—
his smell on my nostrils and lips. The door starts to open.
I look away from his crotch. He continues to read
the top of the pizza box, and the girlfriend says, “good night,”
while playing with the curls in his hair.

 

Dreaming It

This kid claimed he could astral project,
enter my dreams while I slept;
he was jealous that I fingered his ex,
her pussy in the movie theater, watching
Rocky Horror. We always made out
at the same scene: Magenta and Columbia
singing “I want to be naughty.”
I should have worn Mickey Mouse ears,
pajamas; it would have been killer.
I could have played a character, done drag.
My friend Tim played Frankenfurter,
and sat on my lap in panties
and fishnets. I liked it but pretended
not to, like seventh-grade boys in class
picturing warts on old women faces,
hoping to lose a hard-on before the bell rings.
That kid turned out to be a fag too. Last I heard,
he lives in Manhattan, begging for change on sidewalks,
somewhere on St. Marks Place, so he can buy heroin.
I bet he can’t astral project anymore; I did see him
in a dream once, when I was seventeen, jerking off
to gay porn in an empty room in a strange house,
one hand chained to a radiator. I was naked,
and he watched from the doorway, sucking
his index finger. We never discussed it
or his ex-girlfriend’s vagina or how
Tim’s thighs were pale and hairy.
I’d place my hands on them
inside the movie theater,
watching Rocky Horror,
aware of my slight hard-on,
like a junkie sitting on the sidewalk,
asking for help, claiming he’ll do anything,
if you just give him some change.

 

© 2007 Robert Siek

Besides being a poet, Robert Siek also works as a production editor at a publishing house in New York City. He received his MFA in Creative Writing in 1999 from the New School University. His poems have appeared in Dwan, Bay Windows, the Rogue Scholars Collective, the Columbia Poetry Review, Lodestar Quarterly, and Unpleasant Event Schedule. The New School published his chapbook Clubbed Kid in 2003. Four of his poems appear in the anthology Cat Breath: A Rogue Scholars Two-Headed Kitty Anthology (Rogue Scholars Press, 2005). His short story “Sixteen” is published in the fiction anthology Userlands: New Fiction Writers from the Blogging Underground, edited by Dennis Cooper and published by Akashic Books (2007). One of his poems will be published in Court Green, issue 5, in January 2008.