Stephen Barry is a dad and fly fisherman living in the Hudson Valley. He subsidizes these vocations by working as a trial lawyer.

Three Poems (November 20, 2010. Issue 22.)

The Lonely Hour

In a White Plains
bar on a Friday night
during the lonely hour
when hope begins to slide into desperation,
a woman of a certain age
turned to the man sitting next to her.
As her fourth Chardonay became her fifth,
she leaned over and in her best Hollywood
voice
half whispered and half slurred
“What I want, what I need
all I really want”, she said
“is a stiff dick that doesn’t want me dead”.
Sliding on the stool,
so her skirt, J.C. Penney chic,
slid up exposing her thin thigh
and a hint of granny panty.
“Twenty five years and he doesn’t know I’m alive,
he doesn’t touch me, doesn’t speak to me,
doesn’t give a damn”.
Taking another sip she added
“Sophisticated people drink white wine,
I learned that in college,
back when all the boys wanted me but I held out.
Virginity was my liberation”.
And she became more sophisticated
as her sixth Chardonay was poured.
“He is the only man I’ve ever had,
I teased them back in school
but held out for him.
He was going to be something big,
I believed it.
But somewhere it all went wrong.
I can still fit into my old clothes,
it’s not like I got fat and I’m willing to do whatever he
wants,
but all he wants is to watch poker on tv”
Muttering as she took a bigger gulp
“He doesn’t touch me,
if only he would yell or beat me
at least that would be something,
I mean hatred is an emotion.
Instead we sit in silence,
and lay next to each other
as if there were a wall between us”.
Shakily sipping the seventh Chardonay,
she began to weep.
“I work at this stinking job I hate,
putting up with arrogant idiots,
doing all the scut work no one else will do
and when I come home nothing.
I followed his dreams from Arizona
to Texas to New York.
I never asked for much and that is what I got”.
Looking at the man she pleaded
“You don’t have to say you love me,
just let me feel like a woman.
Let me feel wanted and desired,
let me feel what I should have felt for all these years.
Is that too much to ask,
is it too much to ask
to want to feel alive”?

The man shook his head and said “No,
It’s not too much,
Not too much at all”.
Helping her from the bar
he drove her to the nearest motel,
and left her in the room so she could sleep away the pain.

Child of the Movies

We learned of manhood from the movies
we boys who’s father’s died too young
choosing to succumb to the slow suicide of the bottle
rather than face the deadening years of soul killing
conformity.
Leaving us to the scarred women
who tried their best
but feared we would become our fathers
and crush the hopes of a new generation of girls.
Bouncing on the soles of our feet with hunched shoulders
we mimicked the stars and sought a Warner Brothers life.
And I, like sad eyed Robert Ryan
gazed off into the distance
awaiting the final reel.

The Last Summer of Willie Mays

It was the last summer of Willie Mays
of comic books and baseball cards
of Little League Saturdays and Altar Boy Sundays,
the last summer Bazooka Joe and the ice cream truck
of newspaper boys pedaling hard
and throwing the news of Nixon on sleepy afternoon stoops.
It was the last summer of Willie Mays,
the last summer of hairless chins and soft voices,
of endless games of stickball played in the schoolyard
until it was too dark to see,
the last summer of innocence and ignorance.
It was the last summer of Willie Mays,
of ignoring the girls who sat by the schoolyard fence
laughing and singing along with AM rock.
It was the last summer of Willie Mays,
the last summer of childhood
and we were too busy to know.
But the girls sitting by the fence knew as they laughed,
they were already on the Road to Shambala.