Two Poems by Wesley Rothman

Litany of Hustle

Hustle the beat, double-time doubled.
Hustle from your second to your third job.
Hustle hard & hustle smart but hustle nonetheless.
Hustle, or else. Hustle tongue-poised to the neck line,
Hustle to the inner thigh, to the trap wrapped in silence.
Hallowed be thy hustle.
Hustle as in double work, double effort.
Hustle as in dupe the dope.
Hustle wit & smoke & midnight.
Hustle down a consequence, a banded wad.
Hustle in your comfort. Hustle from behind.
Hustle from the corner. Hustle up the mind.
Hustle as the bougainvillea hustles the trellis.
Hustle court-wise, yearlong, dusk to dawn to dusk to dawn & on.
Hustle up a high-rise, down & up again.
This is a hustle-off—rhythm of days, days, days, days, days, days, days, days.
Hustle the wind, the improvised explosive device, the drone, steel cuffs.
Hustle the drone of a migraine.
Hustle the kneed back & tensed shoulder.
Hustle the hustler & the hustled.
Hustle like the Big Bang boomerang.
Hustle into a hologram. Hustle hurdle, higher, higher, higher still.
Hustle savagely, scavenge scrappily & hardscrabble for the scrap
Pat on the back. Hustle for the loose ball, the jump ball
To the baseline & beyond. Hush about your hustle.
Bear your body on a gamble. Hustle in a rush.
Hustle Hercules’s muscle to an arm-wrestle victory.
Hustle the river-flow. Hustle the space-time continuum.
Hustle Heraclitus himself. Hustle Socrates & society.
Hustle highbrow or high hat or high beams or high head.
Hustle the hardheads, the hardness, the head the head the head.
Hustle hyperactive. Hustle the Jack of Hearts hustling the two
To the ten, one after the other, hustling. Round up your hustle,
Corral your heartache, then ride those horses coast to coast
To coast to death. Then ride death. Break that pale stallion.

Transubstantiation

Where light bruises the air
Discreetly, time turns to smoke. Walk
Through & it dominates.
___________________________Passing a mirror
I catch the curve of an ear, a foreign
Gait, how the right shoulder dips more deeply
Than the left. I turn my hand in the air
& the vein that writhes is not mine. I know,
Somehow, it is that of a man I’ve seen
Only in photos.
_________________ In one he stands nearby
My mother. I lean against his left leg
Just grown enough to wobble. Wherever
We stand, the light is remnant—low glow
Of a hushed wick.
___________________& there, his face is not his,
Nor his gut. He has become his great-
Grandfather, whose hand commands the over-
Seer. Smoke trails litter the valley there,
Fields purple with ground fog, ripen with blood.
& here my blood loops, smoke in that light.

Wesley Rothman is the author of SUBWOOFER (New Issues, 2017). His poems and criticism have appeared in Boston Review, Callaloo, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, New England Review, Publishers Weekly, and the Golden Shovel Anthology, among other venues. Recipient of a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, he serves as a Teaching Artist for the National Gallery of Art and lives in Washington, DC.