The Peddlers 			
				

All that midtown weekend
when I 
walked
from hotel room
to tobacconist
to hotel room
to cafeteria
young 
black men
tried to sell me sunglasses.

From 34th to 60th
four or five to 
a street
they stood
behind milk crates
spectacles on display.

The 
peddlers were never
white or tan or brown
but always deepest ebony:
men in 
the full bloom of youth
young black men
who shone with energy
and reeked 
of despair.

I kept buying sunglasses:
pink with flared frames
yellow 
butterflies
with rhinestones
thin round wire rims
but on the next 
block
four more milk crates
mushroomed

I was haunted by visions
of 
sunglasses sliding
over hollow black skulls.
All night
I watched Mary 
Tyler Moore
for reassurance
but in the morning
they'd returned:
black 
men
in the full bloom of youth
standing in the street
selling 
sunglasses.

In the Russian Tea Room
a golden-skinned man
poured water 
over ice
while my mother speared a herring
and insisted I'd been 
conned:
the glasses were a scam
and the peddlers, 
millionaires.