By Jane Barnes
For Mimi Brown
she said you’re so smart but when we
talk we go for hours and I have to
hang up and take a nap and when we
dance at Somewhere Else we go till
closing you’d rather walk to the T than
take a cab or you make friends with the
cabbie get up the next morning and
write a poem about our date read it
out loud to me on some Back Bay
doorstep it’s charming and good but
I want a girl a little less lively someone
normal who even almost bores me
oh I said we don’t have to walk from
Brighton to the North End in an hour
discuss fifteen novels by lesbians
analyze their styles or go to a poetry
reading of gay Walta or Charlie or
go for a “few” drinks get three
burgers or go to Romeo’s and drink
4 espressos at 3 AM walk again to
the Copley Square T stop or sit on
some rehabbed Berkeley Street
porch discussing consciousness
raising aren’t I mellowing out
so what do you mean when you say
it’s not about just whether you like me?
aren’t I witty enough oh you say
you just want some silence?
Jane is a long-time New Yorker, currently living on Staten Island.