Louie Lies - Phillip Levine

[Larry Robinson]

Louie Lies

Louie lives by lying. He must always lie
all day long, and thus he craves fellowship.
He lies about the sunrise: "It was golden,
a great ball of fire clearing the rooftops,
sending the mockingbirds into wild screeches
as they scurried deeper into the branches
of the Atlas cedar." Actually the day
began slowly as the winter overcast
burned off above the treetops. The phone rings.
It's Louie. He's found a huge diamond ring
buried in his sock drawer. He has no idea
how it got there. "When I turn it toward
the light it gives off blue and yellow rays
like nothing ever seen. Would you like it?"
He'll be over within the hour. I make coffee,
turn on the classical music station
to hear Bach's Chaconne for the hundredth time.
When the bell rings it's Louie with a copy
of The Watchtower, his forehead beaded
with sweat, his eyes huge, his jeans sagging
under the weight of his new belly. Nothing
is said about the ring. Instead he tells me
about the women he met on his way over.
"One was from Prague, raven-haired,
pale as a ghost, six feet tall, right out of Poe.
The other spoke English, had been brought up
to believe she was Hemingway's daughter.
She chain-smoked Chesterfields. Both found God
in the Brooklyn Yellow Pages under
'Perishable Items.'" "Awake!" they'd cried
in chorus. Here he'd thought he was awake.
"Maybe I'll convert," he says, swirling his coffee.
He's tried Orthodox Judaism, Zen,
psychoanalysis, downhill racing,
organic farming, LSD. He shakes his head,
his wild black curls flashing in the noon light,
refuses more coffee, and rises to leave.
He has a lesson with his Latin teacher,
a young refugee from the Vatican
who wants to bear his child. The door closes
behind him, and the final notes of the Bach
scrape over and over. The record is stuck,
the DJ with the fake Irish accent is out
to lunch or drunk. I open The New York Times.

	- Phillip Levine