Leave Joe.
Climb out of the television set
and hide behind the imitation oak console.
I’ll bring licorice and lasagna in the middle
of the night—
latkes if you like—
a basin for sponge
baths, clothes my mother will never miss—
you need
only wait eight years till I start puberty; then twenty
months or so until my first ejaculation. Soon after
I will be eighteen and we can marry. It’s really not
so long a wait, considering how much
I love you. We don’t even have to
stay in New York. I’d move back to chilly Minneapolis
and live in the attic, cozy in the turrets. Pink and orange
suit me, we could buy more beads for the archway.
I assume Brenda will be your Maid of Honor (fine with me—
here goes—
I never did care much for Mare), but
won’t you consider Phyllis for bridesmaid alongside
Miss Richards, even though the two of you continue
to have “issues?” (Rho, she’s a good friend at heart.)Of course, I fully support a wife’s decision
to work. You should dress boutique windows down town
as long as you deem fit and tell me what to wear
if my tastes grow too conservative. It’s true, I dream of you,
Rhoda, never Jeannie. To me, you are more “That Girl”
than Marlo ever could be. And when on Monday, March 17th,1989, your mother Ida Morgenstern (née Nancy Walker)
passes on to the great coffee shop in the sky,
I will be there at your side, sitting Shiva, my hands poised
with squares of Bounty (the quicker-picker-upper)
to wipe away your copious tears. I will even skip
my morning Art History lecture in “Rococo to Revolution”
(a key discussion of Greuze and Fragonard),
despite a mid-term two weeks off,
in order to fulfill this husbandly duty.
Oh Rhoda,
Rhoda, Rhoda, Rhoda,
never have I met a girl so beautiful, so
self-critical, so ill-informed about her charms and strengths. Listen
carefully: you are neither fat, awkward nor unlucky:
you make me laugh, baby—
hard, in my gut—
You are no mere supporting character
in this boy’s universe. I guarantee you the top
bunk of my heart, would bet a lifetime of collected baseball cards
that decades after you first walk into Mary’s much larger
apartment for pastry, coffee, the spilling of anxiety,
the world will still find you luminous and electric,
high-cheek-boned, funny as all Hell—
a smart man’s
definition of worth—
and though I am
but a supplicant in foot-pajamas, please know
from these first-grade bones will grow
the man to love you leagues beyond
the average Joe. Oh yes, CBS
is good to me. Each Saturday night
on an orange shag rug in Massachusetts,
bowl of Lucky Charms in my lap,
parents in armchairs, oblivious
to my one deep, central desire,
only then is when I find
what it is to be religious.
