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DAVE NEWMAN

which is the neighborhood where

the University of Pittsburgh is located

which is the school I attended that year

though the year before I attended

a community college and the year

before that another community college

and by attended I mean I sat

in classes and felt confused

while writing notes that sounded

like canaries in a coal mine.

My father worked in a factory

that made pick-up trucks.

My mother checked the hearing

of elementary school children.

In college I neither made

things nor provided care.

I took poetry classes and other

classes about rocks and dead presidents

and tried to imagine a future

while planning my death.

You can only fill a kid

with so much debt and anxiety

before they want to walk

the bridge to nothingness.

It was Friday night and I was drunk

with a bunch of friends, guys who

still attended community college

and/or worked bad jobs

and lived at home and hated

the humiliation of sleeping

in the same bed they’d slept in

since birth, all because of money.

Jobs looked like a treasure map

compared to college

and factories dying turned

the treasure map upside down.

We parked at a meter and climbed

from a dented and nicked Monte Carlo

and headed for the O

The Original Hotdog Shop

a greasy dive that served

French fries in paper boats

so large and overflowing

three people could eat themselves

sick on a large. Did they charge

extra for gravy and cheese? Yes

they did, so the world looked

terrible from almost every angle

even fun, even cheap eats

even our late-night stroll down Forbes.

Be warned: this poem ends

with cops and poetry, not fried potatoes.

I’d earned a C- the previous semester

in my Introduction to Poetry Class

or whatever the fuck it was called

but I adored the teacher, Toi Derricotte

a woman who talked a lot

about being black and from Detroit

which was confusing

because she looked white

and we were in Pittsburgh.

She referred to herself as light-skinned

and talked about her straight hair

and the rift those things caused

with dark-skinned black people

whose hair curled and kinked.

I’d never heard anyone say

light-skinned or dark-skinned

or anything about oppression

not related to money and the lack thereof.

The people I knew measured

their lives in bills and debt

which is a different kind of pain.

The people I knew had skin

that looked like they walked

through meat grinders for a living.

Toi once sang a Billie Holiday

song in the middle of class

like it was a lecture

and her voice vibrated

with so much feeling

with so much ache

I put my face in my hands

but casually so no one would see

me cry if I cried and I definitely

cried because art

because song, because poetry

because twice after class Toi asked

if I planned to kill myself

which I absolutely planned to do

but which I felt less like doing

in the presence of her voice

which sounded like a jazz song

a breath of concern and community.

Another thing she asked

with equal weight

was “Who do you read?” like books

might be the antidote to death.

I shrugged because the answer

was no one and the textbook

we used in class bored me

and sometimes the words rhymed.

The world outside never rhymed.

The world made its own music.

Three blocks from the O

straight down Forbes Avenue

sat a used bookstore.

It was mostly self-help paperbacks

arranged on folding card tables

like an abandoned city.

I walked there with purpose

because I wanted to be reading

because I’d finally been asked

who I was reading and now

I knew I should have been reading

and I wanted to read, desperately

like how those TV preachers

healed sinners with a touch.

I wanted to be saved.

I wanted to be a savior.

I dug into the poetry section

and it looked like hieroglyphics

or maybe books of poetry

because I’d never read, not poetry

not really, just the assignments

in class and at home I’d read

the Bible and devotionals

because I’d been forced

to attend church

and forced to read

church stuff which sounded

like fantasy, a man surviving

in a lions’ den, another man

slaying thousands with the jaw

of a donkey, a one-hundred-year-old

woman giving birth to a child

but now I stood

in the poetry section, pulling

and replacing and trying to focus

and pulling and replacing

and I shit you not

I picked a book because

it was blurbed by Dear Abby

who was famous for offering

romantic and practical advice

in a nationally syndicated column

which read like a candle

lit by your great aunt with bad breath.

But back to Forbes Avenue and the O.

I was medium drunk but super hungry.

I think we’d been smoking dope.

Maybe it was more. Drugs answered

more questions than my classes

and cost a lot less than tuition.

It was late. Most of the city’s drunks

had found mattresses or floors

but we walked with purpose

and I kept wondering if I had enough

money to afford cheese or gravy

because ketchup was great but nothing

as tasteful as cheese or gravy.

I would have built my life

around cheese and gravy

if I could have afforded it.

But money. But poetry.

But late night with no chicks.

Those were my three thoughts

as I walked up Forbes Avenue

lagging, dreaming my dreams

when this frat dude in a frat jacket

walking with his frat pals in frat jackets

planted his shoulder into my chest

so hard he spun me like a top

which forced me walk backwards

to keep from landing on my ass.

The frat guy said “You want

some of this?” and started

his own backstep, waving for me

to come on, his buddies taunting

in their frat guy ways

tugging on their frat guy jackets.

I turned to my buddies

who were almost to the O

oblivious to anything but munchies.

I really did not feel like fighting

which is how I’d been feeling

about college and studying and life:

the effort may not be worth the results.

The results appeared to be endless

student loan debt and a job

selling things no one wanted.

I knew a dude going house to house

begging people to buy windows.

I’d eventually end up selling

windows and driving truck

and painting houses and caring for the sick

but now the frat guy flipped me off

and stopped and took off his frat jacket

in a very dramatic way

almost a dance, a boxer in a ring

so I touched my pal Pat

and said “I’m gonna go

knock this guy out”

which sounded better than suicide

but maybe not as great

as learning the trade of poetry.

I didn’t wait around for Pat’s response

or to see if he even heard my voice.

I started back down Forbes Avenue

away from the O and further away

from the used bookstore where I’d bought

There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves

based on Dear Abby’s recommendation.

I’d read the book in one sitting and knew

it was terrible, like babbling sermon terrible

with lines like “But you, Maria, sacred whore

on the endless pavement of pain”

but I loved it any way, for the words

the way they lined up like trains

rolling down tracks to some distant light

just as I was rolling down Forbes Avenue

hoping for light, meaning victory.

The frat guy strutted and bobbed

and sang “Come on, big man.”

So I came on, three big steps

and threw a roundhouse at his head

like I wanted to remake his face

with dents and blood, and it landed

and he dropped like he’d been meaning

to take a nap right there

on Forbes Avenue, the Cathedral of Learning

less than a block away

a building named after

the religion of education

but owned by a corporation

charging thousands to learn.

I took all my poetry classes

in the Cathedral of Learning

and I sometimes rocked

at my desk, filled with language

filled with desire to be something

I’d never known anyone to be.

A week after this, Toi Derricotte pulled

me aside after class and handed me a book.

A week after this, when I’d already read

There are Men too Gentle to Live Among Wolves

three or four more times, studying lines

like “I played God today! It was fun!”

which was straight-up puke

but which I wrapped around

my brain like rope I could climb

to somehow leave the world

of bad jobs and worse debt

and endless violence.

I believed in rope.

I always saw myself as climbing.

I always saw myself

as falling from every height.

When my mother said God

would come back and lift

the believers through the sky

and I knew I was not a believer

I made a plan to grab

the rope of my mom’s legs

as she floated to Heaven

so that I too could find the glory

but my mom said God wouldn’t allow

sinners to be pulled up by believers.

When Toi Derricotte handed me

a copy of What Work Is

a beautiful burgundy hardback

with a factory worker on the cover

a girl too young to be a factory worker

I thanked her profusely and walked

to the nearest lamp and sat

and the poems read like cars being assembled

and I knew everyone, every character

the firemen and waitresses and line workers.

I knew the factories.

I knew the uniforms and gloves

and the marks on the skins

of everyone who stepped into fire.

I wrote fifty poems that week

burning up the cross

where experience hangs with language

hangs with imagery, hangs with meaning

and, more importantly, one of the frat guy’s

friends said, “What the fuck, man?”

alternatively staring at me then staring

at his pal stretched out on the pavement

then he tried to shove me and missed

and spun back and I punched him

and, more importantly, another frat guy

said, “What the fuck, man?”

and my friends showed up running

and started fighting with everyone

sort of like the Socs and the Greasers

in The Outsiders, a book I’d stolen

from the mall in 6^th grade

and which my mom rolled

her eyes at, meaning: don’t read that book

and meaning: the only book is the Bible.

The fighting on Forbes Avenue continued

so I heard punches landing

like balls in a catcher’s mitt

like birds crashing into windows.

Then two cops appeared on foot

their uniforms blue as the ocean at night

and they started shouting

and they started shoving

and they wore hats

with badges above their brims.

I got frat-punched

but was too hyped to feel it.

The guy I knocked out

wobbled back up and stumbled

into a cop, accidentally but hard

and the cop grabbed him

in some sort of hold

a sort of mid-body choke

and the kid instinctively started to swing

and the cop clamped down

so he trapped the kid’s arms

so they pointed skyward like kites

and his shirt was up

and his ribs were exposed

and the cop said “He went for my gun!”

and the other cop instantly started

banging his billyclub on the kid’s ribs

and my pal Pat said “Run!”

and we all did, both groups.

I booked ass straight

for the Cathedral of Learning

which looked like a brick dick

shining spotlights from 50 floors

so I ducked right and sprinted

past the museum and the library

places I knew but didn’t know

a world I wanted to explore

but not now, obviously

then hung another right, past

the home plate from old Forbes Field

and ended up on McKee Street

in my shitty college apartment

out of breath, out of beer

my friends stumbling in

all of us scared but maybe

exhilarated but mostly scared

of cops and jail

and of falling in the street.

Nobody said anything then someone

said “You see the cop beat that kid?”

We all nodded.

We saw exactly what we knew.

You want to see your life in miniature

take a close look a billyclub moving

at the speed of bees’ wings

on some kid’s ribs and spine.

For years after this I walked past

the library and the museum

and the room where the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust

hosts the Pittsburgh Arts & Lecture series

and I thought: how can I be a part of that?

The answer was, of course, I couldn’t.

They didn’t let people like me in.

They still don’t. That’s okay.

I read every single day.

I taught myself to write books.