FIRST BOOKS ISSUE Gregg Shapiro   COLOR BLIND IN THE EMERALD CITY You told me it would be easy to get lost in a city shaped like a fractured diamond. North and south are just mirages, complicated by compasses. I never could refold a map the right way. Landmarks are helpful if the weather is cooperative. Since it hasn't stopped raining, I threaten to stand in the middle of the street, head back, mouth open, and drown. All I see is black and white. Words on a page, swimming before my eyes; something magnified under a microscope. Tourists have never seen anything so green. Grass that won't die, trees that refuse to change colors, shed their leaves. Didn't you notice that block of burned-out buildings? Look, that used to be the Bible History Wax Museum. Now it's another gray area. See those men warming their hands over a pile of burning newspaper, smoke the color of ink. When I told you that you'd need eight arms to hold me, three heads to watch me, I never imagined you'd chase me with a dozen legs down this yellow brick road. THE MEN WANT TO BE WITH THE MEN My mistake, I guess, trying to convince you to leave Boston and move to Washington. There are more men here, I say, eligible bachelors. Susan shakes her head, violently disagrees. Disappointment, she says, is a woman's closest companion. Single women I know are single because they want to be. I can't hear them crying into their pillows at night. They aren't the only ones. Bizzy says the odds are better at Hechinger's Hardware on Wisconsin Avenue; ten men to every woman. I wonder how many women know about this or if there is a network, sworn to secrecy. When word gets out, they will swarm like bees around the hive, stinging each other. Once inside, transformed into spiders spinning webs across the lumber, cable, tools, nuts and bolts. Salesmen, dazzled by such a display of beauty, stumble, clumsy as moths. Michael Gessner Brown Mars Rosewood & Wood Construction 14"x11"x 3" see more work by Michael Gessner   ROY'S They shoot horse in the window of Roy Rogers' in Georgetown, don't they? Someone told me they saw them, poor little rich kids with stiff mowhawks, bleached hair. Now, I'm stranded in a Roy's somewhere in Virginia, eating French fries with Ellen. Ellen, on her second cup of coffee, worries that the windows of her car in the parking lot aren't rolled up all the way, as a storm rages outside. Two tables away, two men discuss movies. "Godzilla Versus King Kong" and "The Cowboys" with John Wayne. "What do I know about cowboys?" one asks, "I'm from Washington. I only know about Senators." The other stutters in a drawl, chain-smokes. Ellen wishes she had a deck of cards. Wishes she had an umbrella. A man. She'd settle for a man with a deck of cards, holding an umbrella. The door opens and teenage boys with flattops and hickeys, girls with heavy eye make-up running down their cheeks come inside for milk shakes, chicken nuggets. Wet clothes clinging to their bodies like second skin. I am fidgety, lump in my throat, as a nicotine fit threatens to make my hands shake. Sunburned from a weekend at the beach, I am not thinking straight. I refuse to ask the amateur film critics if I can bum a cigarette. I would rather run through the flooded parking lot to the car as lightning strikes a telephone pole, sends it crashing down on me like a hammer and nail. ROOSEVELT ISLAND Planes fly low overhead. We swat at tiny invisible insects. Unable to relax, listen to the end-of-summer air. On a dare, I explore the island alone. Drawn by bird calls, unseen footsteps, a song on a portable radio. The possibility of getting lost, hypnotic. I have no bread to make crumbs, no sense of direction, no matches. My breathing loud, sounds like speech. A language I have studied, never grasped. I hum to drown myself out, to imitate electricity. Twigs, stones, snap, crackle beneath my feet. Pop like breakfast cereal. I whistle because I am afraid, because I hope someone will hear me. Water scrapes the shore. I find a familiar path, pick up my pace. Walk as if I belong, as if I've lived here all my life. MY NEXT BOYFRIEND My next boyfriend won't snore. He'll breathe deep and easy, restfully. Each lung-filling and emptying breath, silent as a submarine. He won't have mood swings, a chemical imbalance or hypoglycemia. He'll be at ease, as free with expressing himself as a guy in a Madonna video. My next boyfriend won't have car trouble or a past. No skeletons, no closets, no silent brooding moments of inner wrestling. He won't chew ice cubes, have any addictions or vices. He won't be tattooed or pierced, scarred or in search of himself through god. My next boyfriend will arrive at the dock, a dreamboat, the sturdiest vessel in troubled waters. My next boyfriend won't be my last.   Entertainment journalist Gregg Shapiro’s interviews and reviews run in a variety of regional GLBT publications and websites. His collection of poems, Protection, was published in January 2008 by Gival Press. His poetry and fiction have appeared in modern words, Bloom, White Crane Journal, Blithe House Quarterly, Mipoesias, and the anthologies Mondo Barbie (St. Martin’s), Unsettling American (Penguin), Sex & Chocolate: Tasty Morsels for Mind and Body (Paycock Press), Reclaiming the Heartland (University of Minnesota Press), and Best Gay Poetry 2008 (Lethe Press). A former DC resident, he currently lives in Chicago with his life-partner Rick Karlin and their dogs, Dusty and k.d. The poems here are reprinted from Protection, © 2008 by Gregg Shapiro, reprinted with permission from Gival Press. For more information on the book, see: http://www.givalpress.com/.   Published in Volume 10:2, Spring 2009. Read more by this author: Gregg Shapiro: DC Places Issue