Three Poems by Bruce Jacobs


THE BLACK ADVERTISING COPYWRITER
AUDITIONS FOR POLITICAL DRAMA

All he has to do, she says,
is pretend that he’s a Vietnam vet
and that she’s Japanese.

She’s marked his lines with bullets.
His character asks hers,
“Where are you from?”
She pauses, says, “Chicago.”
He says, “No. Before that.”
She says, “Ohio.” He says,
“No. Your parents. The ocean.”
She says, “San Francisco,”
then hands him the rice,
his cue to flash back
to the nine-year-old girl
who blew off his right arm
with a grenade in a bowl.

“I’ve never had dinner with a psychologist
who writes plays,” he says.
“Wait a minute,” she says in Japanese,
“that’s not in the script.”
“Sure it is,” he says. “After the rice.
I exhibit Post-Uncle Ben Stress Disorder.
You suggest that I write commercials
until I recall my own brand name.
Then the waiter hands me your bill
for eighty-five dollars.”

She tells him to stay in character,
close his eyes, come closer,
imagine giving her a piggyback ride
through a muddy creek. Her tiny toes
skirting the cold. His hands
on her body, feeling for grenades.
He follows her orders across her skin.
“Good, good,” she murmurs.
“Now call out my name.”
“Uncle Ben, Uncle Ben,” he says.
“No,” she says. “Before that.”

His mouth opens, an empty bowl
held by small brown fingers.

–Bruce A. Jacobs

_________________


THE BLACK ADVERTISING COPYWRITER
DRESSES FOR THE THEATER

The playwright explains
how she would like him:
Oxford shirt, Wrangler denims,
cowboy boots with silver heels.

She unfurls the smooth shirt
like a curtain, praises its weave
against her skin, tells him
if she were a client,
she’d admire his presentation.

With the mirror to her back,
she is not Japanese.
She calls the woman in glass
“the way I look,”
like a tulip facing itself in water,
a rumor of liquid pastel.

The black advertising copywriter
nods, having been addressed
as “Yo, boss” by store clerks,
and quizzed about malt liquor
by people for whom
he provides a black friend.

He fastens six pearl buttons,
runs a zipper along her spine,
just for the moment,
since he knows
in late morning, she will lean
across cream sheets, a woman

who is not Japanese,
wearing the white shirt
of a black advertising copywriter
off her tawny shoulders,

and he will pull percale about his hips
exactly like a kimono,
ask her if she likes the way he looks
enough to walk with him through mirrors.

– Bruce A. Jacobs

___________________


MAGIC

Makes no sense. This late at night,
a little girl in sneakers wielding
a stick? Three feet of hollow prod, alley bamboo,
one wooden tap and each kid runs.
Crazy is contagious.

She flaunts the wand like dime-store jewelry,
treasure of the moment, trigger-ready
in case of need for sorcery as they pass by my stoop,
knowing I could be anybody, hands in my pockets like that.
Her brown face bolts at me, pops me with a “Hi!”
They billow laughter up the street:
“You talked to him – talked to that man – you so bold.”

It’s crazy. Taking potions literally,
casting my bones on sooted marble,
believing bulrushes can push through concrete
and shelter babies left in alleys.
I want to tell her that her world
is reed and stone. She ought to
learn construction. One cannot trust
the way things work in moonlight.

It’s crazy. Making games with strangers,
playing where she’s not supposed to,
a black girl shaking giggle sticks into the night.

– Bruce A. Jacobs

_______________________


Bruce A. Jacobs is a poet, author, musician, and former advertising copywriter. His books of poems are SPEAKING THROUGH MY SKIN (Michigan State University Press) and CATHODE RAY BLUES (Tropos Press). His latest nonfiction book is RACE MANNERS FOR THE 21st CENTURY (Arcade Publishing). His work has appeared in dozens of poetry journals and anthologies, and he has appeared on NPR, C-SPAN, and other networks. He plays drums, poems, and saxophone, and he lives in Baltimore. His blog on race and politics is http://aliasbruce.typepad.com, his poetry blog is http://agonist.org/diary/bruce_a_jacobs, and his Facebook page is http://www.facebook.com/BruceAJacobs1.