Giving up Isaac
God once said to me,
Give me your Isaac
or whatever most precious:
your mother's amethyst,
a pot of plastic peonies
from your first winter lover,
or your one functioning kidney
with overworked nephrons,
I defied Him.
And for that
I live in a no-frill no-hot water flat
on East Houston and Third
among drug peddlers
and dirty pigeons,
who squander sidewalk space.
Share quarters with a drag queen
who does too many pills and
shakes down too many boyfriends,
with a switchblade and a toot-toot.
And at night, I sit at Shangri-la Lounge
next to an old woman
with one eye half-shut
an affliction from her youth
or too many beers? I ask her:
Did God ever ask you for your Isaac?
She lifts her highboy and gulps the dregs,
then, limping out the bar,
she drags that stiff leg
like pulling a bad child
mesmerized by an arsonist's fire.