Poems by Sherraine Pate Williams

 Staying Alive

as I can and I don’t care anything about Tony
Manero’s new life in Manhattan. Fuck that rapist fuck.
No, he didn’t do Annette, he only watched. But what stuck
with me was the hurt his silence approved. Maybe Joey
and Double J rode that train but I’m sure that Stephanie
could tell you a different story—that some girls’ luck
has nothing to do with winning a dance contest, dumb schmuck
that she was for letting him in later, or ever. See,

this time and place has a way of saying he’s okay,
that he’s smooth with his slick moves, and it’s only
such a heartthrob is trapped by his poor circumstances
so we’ll still call him hero and root for his sweet day

in the limelight. But ask any Annette, or me, if she
feels like the cunt he calls her, after. She only wanted to dance.

Tony’s Take

If she feels like the cunt I called her, after, she only wants
to dance around the fact that I never wanted anything from her
besides a ready audience.  She knew the rules though it haunts
her now, I’m sure. I know it’s crass, but time slips by faster
than a four-on-the-floor rhythm, and I’ve got my own fight
grubbing my way out of this low rent life with nothing more
than the will to shrug off obligations deeper than her knight-
in-shining-armor need to see me as her savior.

She’s no whore,
I know it, but I never guessed she didn’t get that you rate
your own worth, then live up to it, because if you can’t, others—
your friends, family even—want you stuck with their own sad fate,
stifling desire under cheap notions of loyalty and honor.

I won’t stop now to fake feelings I don’t have, but I wish
I could tell her, for her own good, she ought to vanish.

Bobby C. on the Verrazano Bridge

I could tell her, for her own good, she ought to vanish
like me, but I need to swing this three-way I’ve planned
with Fate and the hard Narrows beneath me. The anguish,
the sheer what-the-fuck-should-have-been sadness that spans

this life. I’m not sure how she wound up in my car
with Double J, Joey, and me.  Tony should’ve
stopped that shit, but no, instead he rode along, far
from the friend he pretended to be.  I could’ve

told her to stay away, but I’m in hell myself,
nowhere to go but down. Pauline will have my child
without me, and I’ll do what’s best for us all, never
mind the stuff they’ll drum up and everything else
they’ll say about me being a coward. But I won’t fail
in this thing. It’s such a lame joke, and I’m the sucker.

What Double J said to Joey

In this thing? It’s such a lame joke and I’m the sucker
now that Tony’s gone. To hit that shit would be too easy.
No obligations to a skank like that, but no matter.
With her I could get my nut off any old time but bury
any chance I’ve got with a real woman once word got around.

Besides, I’m no moron. If she’s got any self-respect
and none for the way shit’s always been, this bitch will hound
one of us now to marry her. She’ll whine until she wrecks
our street cred. They’ll say Tony’s old slit got over on us.

This is his fault. He left us, man, same as this slut, though we
really loved him. The prick’s just jerking off, trying to get famous.
Maybe we should pay a visit to his sweet, new Stephanie.

Fuck it, Joe, this shit just makes me tired. Maybe I’ll get
my sister to decide which of her friends is my best bet.

Stephanie’s Story

My sister decides which of her friends is my best bet,
but I’ve got this Brooklyn boy on a string.  I’m in no rush.
At least he shares my dreams. He’s a warm body that doesn’t get
a say in what I do.  I sometimes feel so disgusted
trying to crawl up from the chorus line where everyone’s
a gypsy looking for that follow-spot. He makes me feel
I’m lead in a show that’s SRO. Here, you’re under the gun
and hustling, all the time getting older. It makes you ill,
these girls, the younger dancers, coming in fresh, and better.
Maybe I should take my sister up on her offer and meet
one of her Wall Street honeys, or maybe I’ll become an actor.
God knows I’ve acted enough love scenes between the sheets
just to keep Tony from losing sight of me. But I know
he’ll move on soon enough. God, I’ll hate to see him go.

[Father] Frank’s Prayer

He’s moved on, soon enough. I hate him, God. To see him go
and forget he’s had his chance to play around. He leaves me
here with our parents, all alone.  I’ve tried so hard to know
what you want, but the collar they had me leashed to—I see
now it was never just for you.  The consummate ego,
the nerve it took for him to leave, was like my choice that ended
their hope.  In that way, we are and aren’t the same, I suppose.

Annette came to me the other day, said her sin had been
one of pride, that she thought Tony might grow to love her
over time if she made him save her.  Kyrie eleison.
The break down she suffered over that night, she said, led her
to see her own guilt in Tony’s offense. Christe eleison.

There’s so much sorrow when we wake to our faults,
our complicity bared. Lord, it is like an assault.

Annette’s Song

Once our complicity is bared, it is like an assault.
I knew he’d make himself live with what he’d done or hadn’t
had the balls to do to me. I moved away and spent
years quashing thoughts of that time and him, the result

of which kept me fixed there in hatred. I know I’m not the sole
victim.  No one escapes. It’s just how life is. What it meant,
how it happened, who’s to blame, that’s just shit to torment
yourself with. But you can’t live in dying all the time, so

now I’ll try to find a way to take on all that hurt.  Below
the superficial “I’m okay, and you?” daily cover
we make just to get through, inside us there’s a nexus where
old angers rage. But grace is sometimes chosen over sorrow.

Because without suffering there is no kindness. You see,
I’m staying alive, as I can, and of course I care about Tony.

Sherraine Pate Williams’s most recently published poems have appeared in Southern Poetry Review, The Los Angles Review, Mezzo Cammin, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in poetry from Murray State University’s creative writing program and teaches basic literacy skills to adults.  She currently lives in Kentucky with her family.