Charles Harper Webb

Forgiveness                                             

The waiter bonks a gangster’s wife. 
She thinks, “I deserve more passion
in my life.” She doesn’t think,
“My husband is a jealous man.”
And so she dies, returning as a ghost

who goads her husband toward revenge
as the waiter begs forgiveness,
lashed to a chair, a black bag
swallowing his head. Forgiveness,
as the gangster knows, requires

the power to chop off the cuckolder’s toes,
gouge out his eyes, and feed his gonads
to a pig. Lacking that, it’s just
another lye martini, more Man of War
tentacles to wrap a stricken heart.   

Christ was a god for sure to care
about our sins, once that first nail
slammed in. I hope, as jeering
Romans raised his cross, he saw mountains
ablaze with sunlit snow, and thought,

“They’ve never looked so good.”
I hope their cold flew in to numb
his wounds enough that he could still
say, “Love thy neighbor” as the sun
burned black, and vengeful heaven roared.

Procurer to the Stars
—for Scotty Bowers

It’s about knowing who sucks what,
which on-screen minx wants busty blondes,
which ladies’ man craves slender boys,

what famous couple, their marriage a model
for the world, act as one another’s
beard / bazooms. It’s all about threesomes

and foursomes and lines to pull the train— 
about vice cops on their knees, a prince
with a social disease, old ladies with young

muscle-punks, sex symbols too drunk
to spunk, heart-throbs who sob for their own
kind. It’s about knowing who loves

redheads, who hankers for black;
who wants hairy, who needs smooth;
who quivers for big feet; who, tiny hands. 

It’s about on-screen is to off-screen
as Cadillac to stinky snack, as Relativity
to refried monkey glands. It’s about whoring

hubbies, roaring wives, itchy kings
and bitchy queens, Quasimodos who lick
toe-cheese, Diamond Dans who want

a shower of gold and a hot lunch—
about press agents who know the score
and fix the game—about the fox trot

and the guess-not, the hoe-down
and the show-down, the promenade
and the “Oh God!” All about,

“What the public doesn’t know can’t hurt.”
Who wants clean, it turns out,
when they can have dirt?

 

Charles Harper Webb's latest collection of poems, Sidebend World, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Red Hen Press published his novel Ursula Lake in Spring, 2022.