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for Sam Nigro, Thisbe Nissen and Rory Golden

I
Sam’s story is that he was walking
across America and hungry
the way starving men feel the moment before
the hole opens wide enough to take them in.
It wasn’t that he had no money but that
he was fifty miles from the nearest town;
he would have exchanged everything
for longer legs or maybe
just a rag of water to wipe his face with,
squeeze a drop into his mouth.
Were it not for the dependable kindness
of large trucks, were it not for the half-
melted ice cream he accepted
the way sinners accept salvation,
as light and their everything –
what would have happened –
were it not for the restoration
in ben&jerry’s chunky monkey
that gave unto him miles he thought
were forever closed, and years?


II
Thisbe’s story is that in the days
when Häagen-Dazs was king
and the cartel threatened every store:
we will not share shelves with b&j!
She wore a T-shirt to summer camp asking
‘What’s Häagen-Dazs afraid of?’
And this shirt was her first soldier’s uniform,
a taste of the left. It was in ice cream
she discovered evil in the world,
and the meaning behind Jerico
and Montgomery, Alabama.

III
Rory’s story begins in New York
in a parlour that does not sell swirls
or double cones, one flavour atop another.
A sign at the door says No mixing!
And when he was in love with a black man
they went to this store and thought
the sign was for them –
that the owner was upset not because
they were gay, but because one was a nigger-lover,
and the other a nigger. Now, years later,
he is painting the story of J.R. – a black boy
from Virginia, run over five times,
his life erased by wheels.
The driver’s little brother is now too scared
to ever love black again.
Rory is painting this story in oil,
the colours deeper than the pastel
of ice cream.There is an anger that moves
each stroke, rooted in a parlour in New York.