Nighthawks

Nighthawks (1942), Edward Hopper

Nighthawks

1

Not drinking his coffee, not listening

To the two guys’ stupid conversation,

The lone man stares at the urns, glistening,

Wondering, “Why in God’s creation

I’m so fucking addicted to the stuff,

Starting the first damned thing in the morning

Till late at night, like I can’t get enough—

What I need’s traffic signs all over, warning—

On the road to hell—DANGEROUS CURVES AHEAD,

Like Lana Turner, HAZARD: SOFT SHOULDERS—

Or Rita Hayworth,  CAUTION: RED HEAD AHEAD.

Bare arms! I won’t look at how Red folds hers,

Because she knows she’s driving me nuts.

Don’t think I ain’t got your number, toots!”

2

The man with the cigarette is telling

The counterman about that night’s big bout—

How Billy Conn, like the dummkopf Schmeling,

Would be champ, but he tried to knock the jig out

In the thirteenth, and  was K.O’d  himself.

“What else do you expect? A mick hoity-toit,

A light heavyweight, a goddamn elf,

Matched up with that big nigger from Detroit.

I lost a bundle on the fight, right honey?”

He says to the redhead staring at her nails.   

“Don’t get me wrong, Gus, it’s not the money.

I just hate it when a white fighter fails.

On the radio you can’t see the fight—

You can’t tell Lewis from Conn, black from white.”

3

She knows men inside out, as two exes

And dozens of others could attest.

A veteran of the war of the sexes,

She’s seen the worst and none of the best.

Childless, pushing forty, she knows men won’t

Be taking her to fights when she’s fifty,

Or to bed either, unless they’re drunk—they don’t

Care if you can’t cook, sew, are unthrifty—

Like the jamoke with his back to the window,

The one who can’t stop not looking at her—

No girl, no personality, no dough—

Is he her long dark night of the future?

Men! Which one of them isn’t a moron?

They act like they don’t know there’s a war on.

4

Augustus Jones was the counterman’s name,

But customers and A.A. friends called him Gus.  

The Village was a great place when he came,

The year of the crash, on a Greyhound Bus,

All the way from What Cheer, Iowa,

Where he’d worked as a small town soda jerk—

Not, following his father, studying law—

But wanting to make painting his life’s work,

Like Grant Wood, of American Gothic fame.

But drinking and a serious heart attack

Had taken the aspirant out of the game.

He’d made a resolution: Never look back.

His artistic dreams had come a cropper,
But he lives on—in Nighthawks, by Hopper.

                          Robert Forrey, 2012