She counted her money

before we went in,

avenue beside us anxious

with Friday-evening traffic.

Both fourteen, we shared a Newport,

its manila butt salty to our lips.

Inside, from a huge book

of designs and letter styles,

she chose to get "MARY"

in a black, Old English script

on the back of her neck.

The guy who ran the shop

leaned over her for forty minutes

with a needled gun

that buzzed loud

as if trying to get free.

He took her twenty-five dollars

then another ten

for being under age.

Back outside, the sun

dipped behind rooftops,

about to hand the sky over to night.

Lifting her hazel hair,

she asked me to rub

some A&D ointment

on her new tattoo;

my finger glistened in salve

as I reached for her swollen name.

minor characters in somebody else's

melodrama (first appeared in Black Quarterly

by Randall Horton 

Hugged against red brick walls,

five o'clock shadowed men

  whose brims break

over one eye socket, lean--

knees bent like boomerangs,

whisper incoherently

how heroin swimming through their veins

is gooder than a muthafucka,

 words slow dancing each other

to a slur, back pockets dragging

a half-pint of Odessa, the seal popped

since evening rush hour.

On any corner from N to U,

a fast walk and frantic stare

followed by raised index finger

brings a deliberate head nod--

the lingua franca of Ninth Street.

Car trunks unfasten deep

in silk dresses and fresh leather coats.

Inside the after hours joint

down from Birdland,

the strike-straight crack of a cue ball

breaks over Wynton Marsalis' horn.

Women are snake charmed

by wanna be hustlers

who sport gators and swift speech,

promise salvation when nothing

is guaranteed except a dope habit

and these streets, nothing but ghetto life

  strung out 24/7-- like a religion.