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UNCLE HARLAN
I always loved when Uncle Harlan came to visit
Not often but when he did I didn’t miss it
He was what I didn’t know existed
Something our women called sophisticated
Back again from Europe he treated us
To a slideshow: Madrid, London, Paris
He wasn’t an uncle really of course
But some distant cousin, third or fourth
Handsome Uncle Harlan had style and taste
All the women whispered it was such a waste
That he was a (quote/unquote) Confirmed Bachelor
Which meant in those days he either played the women
Or played the woman to other men. I didn’t care
He was tall and angular, long neck and slick black hair
Peppered his speech with French and Spanish phrases
Failed to teach me not tongues but how to tie my shoes
I tie them still with clumsy loops like cowboy lassoes
That elicit laughter, so I switched to loafers like his
Soft Italian leather like skin to touch
Buffed to perfection, that is: not too much
He didn’t want to be tied down. Convention kills
He confided. His European souvenirs were personal
Secrets to be savored, not shared as public art
But hidden in the hollow camera of the heart
To this kid, it was no one’s business what he did
He’d been to Paris, London and Madrid.
SACRED CITIES AND PROFANE
Tlachihualtepetl
From the Garden of Edinburgh
Back to the city of brotherly love
A taxi stuck in snow in Swansea
Never reaches London, much less Copenhagen
A train breaks down at Saint Pancras Station
Canceled pilgrimage to Canterbury
A blushing romance in Bath
A surrender, a seduction, a velvet rejection
Legs remembered and streets forgotten
Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels, the Hague.
***
A plane lands clumsy as an Albatross
On a hijacked Grecian runway
For a honeymoon in Cretan caves
Pink and black Santorini sand
Worship in the bay of Kythera
Deep bows to terraced Sifnos vines
Tours and detours of Istanbul
Drowned nudes in underground cisterns
Selçuk’s Cavern of the Seven Sleepers
The sickness not quite unto Ephesus
Then back to mathematical Samos
And the legends of long-legged Lesbos
That was one life; this is another
In no particular order.
***
Driven to city after profane city
Touching down in Sofia, Timișoara
Far from naked rocks in the sea
Corinth and Thessaloniki
To Budapest and Bucharest
Cities asleep without rest
This is one life; that was another
Mixed like a cocktail with bitters and ice.
***
What about the car wreck on River Road
What about the pool cue sold
And what about the train wreck on the way from Trieste
To Belgrade, the engineer spatchcocked on a flatcar
On the very day that protesters in Tiananmen Square
Faced down tanks, next morning headlines in Athens told us.
***
Fact is, I died long before that in the City of Angels’
Valley of Slow Death, ascended in a Delta jet
Looked out over the panorama of my youth
Dry sands of Cucamonga to muddy waters of Pacoima
From the islands of Balboa to the beaches of Laguna
A trip to Venice for the price of a pawned guitar
Stolen kisses, kitsch and country music cliches
Marriages and mockeries and blood-soaked clouds
Tumbled down at last dead drunk and lost
In the haze of Ciudad de México, then Puebla
Long before the more fortunate infidelities of the fall
Resurrection an empty promise, or threat.
Richard Collins has lived in Eugene and Baton Rouge, Bucharest and Timisoara, Los Angeles and London, Swansea and now in Sewanee, Tennessee. His recent work has appeared in The Plenitudes, Willows Wept, and Marrow. A memoir, In Search of the Hermaphrodite, is out from Tough Poets Press (2024).
THE CITY KEY 
Wonderful ♥️
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