Frank Rubino
Like Jack Did
The level of conversation all the workday long
is tech, tech, tech— it just opens a void in me.
The sad distance I first saw drawn
in the comic book panels of Jack “King” Kirby
has been my sorrow throughout my career.
Across his galactic splash page in Kamandi 36,
and throughout his work in Fantastic Four,
he spread mural-like, between one planet
and another, the apartness I now recognize
in the black windows whose candy-colored computer code I write.
On my dark Samsung monitor,
my typing looks like Christmas lights from Mars.
If I could see across space and time like Jack did,
I would see Kolomatsky’s young clean face on Second Avenue,
outside the bodega where we talked. We talked
on the church wall about our girlfriends one spring afternoon,
and the way one can hook one’s arms around their thighs,
while one’s face is in their muff. We loved those girls
for letting us hook our arms around their thighs,
like wheelbarrows we were dumping.
(Wonder if I was drinking my usual Tropicana orange juice.)
Whenever I break from work, and feel as empty as code,
I wish I could kneel down in front of my woman and hook my arms
around her thighs, and when she lets me, and when I do,
I have the feeling I’m crossing space and time,
like Jack did.
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