To Angelina from Nikos in His Old Age
by Reetika Vazirani
(reprinted from AGNI 54)
The time comes, Angelina, and the day’s blinking.
No sleeping around, no mother,
nothing interesting about the weather.
We played hooky a lot and made gossip.
But I thought you liked it, cheating on Nisseem
who became emperor of coffee—
how’d he do it!
He was loaded, I was good in bed.
You got your rich husband,
and for years my cock.
You fussed over the time I
sprayed your new lilac dress twice in a row.
I loved your thick hair shaking
at the sink as you rinsed your dress.
My husband, you screeched,
he will kill me he will
sniff this he
will chase me out with the dog!
Boy was I a nut.
You at thirty, I forty-five,
and Sonia my wife. If she caught the slightest cold,
they said, You poor angelic
sufferer,
that lousy rat Nikos slept with
gorgeous whores.
Pow pow what a lawsuit.
Come on, Lina, we have cheering up to do.
Do the calculus. I’m eighty, you’re a luscious sixty-five,
church pillar,
voluptuous benefactor you are practically the Pope.
You think I’ll stain your reputation.
Lina little closer I want to
breathe you.
You’re gray? So’m I,
nobody’s looking.
This is Trinidad. We were the left margin of Spain.
It is evening and I have no money.
Once I was great and you wanted me.
I surrender; I wanted you more.
Nevermind Althea, nevermind Lucky
from Kuala Lumpur,
the Americans were just a lark, topless—
what could I do?
You were a woman. Forgive me I didn’t tell you,
you were my spark, your lowcut bodice.
Don’t rant at me later if I wink at you in church.
I, a Portuguese, wanted to claim Cervantes,
so all my life I rode my horse.
Reetika Vazirani is the author of two books of poetry, World Hotels (due out from Copper Canyon in October 2002) and White Elephants (Beacon, 1996). For the past three years she was the Banister Writer-in-Residence at Sweet Briar College in Virginia and now lives in Trenton, NJ. (2001)
