Jim Stewart: IN WHAT CITY DID YOUR PARENTS MEET? • Cleaver Magazine

Poetry by Jim Stewart
IN WHAT CITY DID YOUR PARENTS MEET?

The Oyster Bar closed awhile in the pandemic. Before
trips to Beacon I went by there with my son, whispered
corner to corner in the hallway outside. My Dad followed
Mom from out West because he said he had nothing
better to do. I thought the fish overpriced and greasy.

What was the name of your oldest cousin?

His sister was older, but he was older than me.
It never felt like three and a half years. We were two boys
for all I knew. We chased lizards and gamed on hex
maps, piled dumb jokes on each others’, shot
bottle rockets. The other thing we had no
name for. Much older I’ve named it. He never
did but Brian told me recently he never stopped playing
in the hot tub, even after finding God.

What was your first car?

Weeks of hours in its great lush backseat by my brother,
and no one expected kids to belt then, so I lounged
from Farmington to Flagstaff, through Nevada
and out to San Diego with Waylon, Emmylou
Johnny, Merle, and Kris teaching life
without parole and low-down freedom. Once near Big Sur
we pulled over for a pee and the soda and candy
we’d spilled brought fire ants in the back. Five
or six stings on our bare legs before we said anything.
It became mine much later, after Dad got the Camaro.
The 454 V8 made me feel bigger
than it was right or safe to.

What was the name of your third grade teacher?

Maybe it was the model glue I used for hours
in my desk cubby, but I walked in a dream then.
Walked out of the bathroom once and realized
I’d gone in the sink. I stared over worksheets through
math period, fantasies and stories shielding me. Somehow
I learned long multiplication anyway. One day
I wouldn’t go to music. She talked to me twenty minutes.

What was the name of your first pet?

I remember puppies tumbling down the steps
into the sunken living room. Later, after the home
invasion Dad had a shepherd trained
as a guard dog, but he bit my cousin. They said
he went to a nice farm.

What was the first concert you went to?

Brian’s 69 Bronco was a yellow crackerbox. We fit
nine or ten in back to get to the rodeo colosseum. The pit
under the stage was a temporary autonomous zone.
I didn’t know how to inhale at 13 but I burned
a Jack Chick comic and bought a thin half-sleeved shirt
with a devil baby. Some idiots thought they could beat
up the Sikh security guards and got carried out unconscious.
Much later in that same truck Brian pulled over
to look at the river on a bad trip. “Wait, wait,”
he kept saying, until we saw someone about to steal
the truck, still running, with the keys still in.
I thought I made that up but Justin confirmed.
My first time with Brian wasn’t that night but another
trip, and I was technically an adult by then. I said later
I was ashamed to be a virgin. He said,
“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Jim Stewart has been published or has poems forthcoming in In Company: New Mexico Poets after 1970, Liminality, Rattapallax, Passengers Journal, The City Key, Does it Have Pockets, Neologism Poetry Journal, Eclectica, J Journal, and the Moonstone Arts Center’s Ekphrastic Poetry anthology. He co-edited and designed Saint Elizabeth Street magazine and hinenimagazine.com. He teaches programming and logic in New York.