PI On A Hot Tin Roof

multicolored streamers. It was one of the few literary hot spots that drew a salt-and-pepper crowd of poets. At most other venues, just about anyone might show up in the audience, but the poets themselves tended to be all one color or the other.
    Talba liked the multicultural aspect and indeed admired a number of white poets, though she couldn’t understand why they tended to read in a monotone instead of memorizing their poems and performing them. She blamed T. S. Eliot, who, in her opinion, had a lot to answer for. If people could be bothered coming out at night to hear poetry, the least she could do was give them a show.
    She never got to read first at Reggie and Chaz. So many people came just to see her that they liked to save her for last, but tonight she had begged to go third and had finally negotiated fifth.
    The poet immediately before her was white and political, her favorite kind of act to follow, since her own material was so different. She read a poem inspired by recent experience, called “The Intersection.”
    The Intersection
    Mr. William Butler Yeats wrote that
    “Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement”
    Tha’s whatya call a poem within a poem
    And I always loved that line.
    But I’m gon’ go ol’ Bill one better.
    ’Cause somethin’ I seen
    Was even more obscene
    Than nature.
    I was over at my buddy Bubba White’s
    And Bubba gets a nosebleed.
    So I go lookin’ for a tissue,
    Happen to open the wrong drawer
    And this is what I see:
    I find his favorite trove of sex toys.
    Now I’m real happy for ol’ Bubba,
    Who’s kinda gettin’ on these days,
    Got a nice young girlfriend
    I was kinda wonderin’ how he was gon’ keep.
    And in that drawer I see a cache of
    Them Viagra pills
    And I feel even happier
    For him, ’cause I hear the young
    Kids, not more than twenty-one
—
    Talk about how it keep ’em goin`
    Maybe thirty-six hours straight,
    And I think even thirty-six minutes
    Probably make ol’ Bubba
    Want to jump the moon.
    And then I see a great big box
    Of condoms, and I know ol’ Bubba
    Even in his joy,
    Be playin’ it safe.
    Now ain’t that nice, I think.
    And then I see the gun.
    Just nestled in there snug and cozy
.
    And I ponder what ol’ Bubba
    Might be afraid of,
    ’Cause all the condoms
    In the entire state
    Ain’ gon’ protect us
    From
that
kinda mess.
    I’m pretty sure that
    Firearm be loaded
    And ready to go, too,
    Just like Bubba on a good night
    In the event he know what that is.
    Put me in mind of two streets
    Intersect here in our city
—
    Desire, and Law
—
    And that’s for real.
    Think to myself—
    Hope that never happens.
    Hope ol’ Bubba keep
them
two
    Separate for sure.
    Hope that nice young girlfriend
    Never make him mad
    At the wrong time.
    Hope nobody else in the house
    Come in his room one night
    Lookin’ for a tissue,
    End up
    Full of bullets.
    ’Cause all the nice young girls
    In all the world
    And all the Viagra
    In the whole parish of Orleans
    Ain’ gon’ cure what Bubba’s got.
    Or what we all
got.
    It was a dark poem, and though the other didn’t have a happy ending, it did leave ’em laughing—at least in a rueful kind of way, which was the way she liked it. She signed off in her usual way, “The Baroness myself thanks you,” and stepped gracefully off the stage. The others in her party—Eddie and Angie—had sat in the back, and the three of them slipped into the bar.
    ***
    Eddie wasn’t much for poetry, but he loved the sound of Ms. Wallis’s smooth-as-butterscotch voice, which was probably the only thing that kept him from firing her sometimes. Like tonight—for wearing a dress that looked about right for Mardi Gras.
    The other thing, he had to admit she had a pretty good sense of humor. But he couldn’t for the life of him understand why an educated woman wrote in what he called Ebonics.
    “I don’t get it either,” she’d told him. “It’s just the way I hear the poems.” Like she was Joan of Arc.
    Angie said, “Nice dress, Your Grace.”
    “Mama said your daddy’d fire me for it.”
    “I might,” Eddie said. “I might. Weren’t you a little on the realistic side tonight?”
    Ms. Wallis shrugged. “I read Angie the poems in advance. She said full speed ahead.”
    Eddie cocked an eyebrow at Angie, then turned back to his young assistant. “That true about the gun?”
    “Uh-huh. And you can guess who Bubba is—but unfortunately, there’s nothing illegal about it. I found Oxycontin,