MEN PLAY MEN: Poetry by Constantine Contogenis

MEN PLAY MEN

“I tell you — men play men, not hole cards,”
then he mimes peeking under to not see them.
Reading this new guy, we give him weak smiles for foolery.
Then he’s dealt promising up-cards and bets big —

such a nerve, he owns, to not look under
for the possible flush in hearts (which he’s just lucky,
he guesses, to fill from the hole). Or showing a four open-
to-a-face-card straight, he goes all in, revealing

(to help us out) that he really has seen his hole cards —
but we can’t read him if he hasn’t. When he learns
his own tell for his betting blind, which he betrays
when betting seeing, we learn a fear of playing.

HE TAUGHT HIMSELF COWBOY

He taught himself cowboy watching Westerns
on TV, but he knew there was more.
He hired a placid horse and broke in his outdoor
duds. The fans might love the jumpy hotshots,

their glinty guns, embossed leather, snorty
mounts, but he’d learned from Peckinpah:
like for real, most shots go wild, the calm
few kill most; and the actors he echoed

never stalled a fated showdown (but took the time
to make each gesture a person’s);
nor depended on a plot or scripted lines
to give them the drop. He admired the quick

draws, but vowed he’d never abandon the bullets
he shot — holding his aim of them to the promised
skin, blood, flesh, bone, heart.
Weekends, at dusk, he’d ride, at a walk, out past

whining tires and a busted housing plan,
dismount, strip to tough-as-leather feet,
and race by or jump over rooted weeds
and broken bottles — to slow the waves of blood

that shake his trigger finger. That night he dreamt of
getting tuckered out, riding up under
an oak, tying reins to a thick bush, doffing
a well-worn hat, sitting on his bedroll,

and cooking campfire beans. He woke happy: still young,
he knew himself ready to assume the self-.
respect due to — well, he tried “sidearm-,” “pistol-,”
even “-warrior” — a plain old, real-life gunfighter.

THAT ME

The surface of her kitchen sink thickens,
the toilets darken, the plastic slipcover
splits, a chair leg splinters, and her clothes
stiffen to a shine. After the next rush to

the hospital, I place her in a long-life
home. When I do visit, she likes my kissing
her clean hair, face, hands; and my clowning,
bowing, blowing kisses. “I love you, I really

do,” she repeats, not daring to guess who.
Her friendly eyes focus backward into her brain
to a clog of threadbare neurons. She starts to …
mouth syllables she finds, which seem … to repel

each other. She briefly panics, then bravely yells one
of them — “HAH” — again and again to keep it in reach.
She looks hard at me, as though what she’s yelling is proving
her right. I nod many times. “Yes, Mom, it’s that me.”

BORDERING

Your built-in software is simulating sentience. All black— no, blank —
or white? Lids part: you’re looking out of, say, a window
frame. Two cups of coffee climb you out, to look and notice:
rush hour, subway, on your own … face muscles still slack.

Take your methylphenidate (from Greek for
wine-wood-shining forth):
to re-embody you (yourself?).
All charges dropped, take back your badge
and gun. Or break your spying cover, proclaim

your secret wishes; charge up your finger muscles; hit these keys.
Until, tiring of your unretiring double, you take the trouble
of falling asleep. Wait, that twitching in your thigh dies out;
listen, your blood is tapping brittle pipes; follow, breathing in
and breathing out, until you drop off … well, unrememberingly.

… when Dad said, Dying’s been keeping me up for weeks.
I live now to doze. (The “z” sounding off) he kissed a smile to the air
with three fingers Orthodoxly pursed, to make us aware:
Oh, Sleep, he said with a straight face, is so sweet.

Constantine Contogenis's collection Ikaros (Word Press, ’04) won a First Prize "Open Voice Poetry Award”. He co-translated Songs of the Kisaeng: Courtesan Poetry of the Last Korean Dynasty (BOA, ‘97). His work appears in Joining Music with Reason: 34 Poets, British and American: Oxford ‘04-‘09, chosen by Christopher Ricks (’11), and Pomegranate Seeds: Greek-American Poetry, ed. Dean Kostos (‘08). He has been published in numerous journals including Whiskey Island, Hayden’s Ferry Review, MAYDAY Magazine, Scarlet, Paris Review, TriQuarterly, Asian Pacific American Journal, and MacGuffin. His work was also shown in Poetry Society of America's Poetry in Motion program on public transportation. He holds an MFA from Columbia U. and is a fellow with Incite @ Columbia University