:Poem
Once he was the big-eared kid
who drove each day to lunchtime Mass. He knew nothing
of what would come, laughed, smoking a Lucky
behind the wheel of an old red Plymouth

How he seemed aglow with it, after.

To hear his affectation, his feyness,
that irony, at odd moments,
wondering if he'd made them laugh,
the hundreds, charmed them,
at bathhouse and bar
all those years in the Seventies
when he'd shown up in leather pants
           and high heels,
black hair streaming almost to his waist.