elseâs poems. I kept getting distractedâthere was a paper sac on the floor next to me, of beer and the frozen turbot filets I would make for dinner later. I kept picturing the bottom of the bag getting wet. We would brake to a stop and I would stand and lift the bag by its brown paper handles, not thinking to lift from the bottom. The fish and beer would spill out across the floor, fizzing and spitting, ruining everything while everyone stared.
Even now, having just eaten, drinking this beer, the thought gets my eyes pinching.
Jensen got on at Fifth Avenue. I recognized him by his height and knit fingerless gloves. Iâd remembered his gloves being red, but these were blue. He made his way toward me and he looked like heâd lost weight. I couldnât be sure, and I donât think he saw me. I hope he didnât see me. I wondered if I looked different, too.
I thought of calling out, but there were too many strangers between us, and I didnât want to move until my stop. Almost everyone would be off the bus by then and if my bag spilled fewer people would stare. I watched him over my book. I peered. I remember thinking that word, peered. I remember my foot fell asleep against the wheel well. I remember wanting to say, Iâve missed you.
Jensen was reading advertisements for skin cream and cable channels; he held the metal pole and rocked back and forth with everyone else. I wanted to ask him where heâd been the last three years, if that last story heâd told me was true, about the guys beating the shit out of him in Washington Heights.
He got off at Seventh Avenue. I didnât chase. I didnât even put down my book.
The bus pushed forward with the rest. Only then did I get the courage to look back. I thought I might get a glimpse of him, entering a coffee shop or electronics store, a church or synagogueâsomething that might give a clue as to what heâs been doing. There have been no new poems. No cryptic emails from Europe or the Bosporus or the Caspian Sea. No sightings in the usual bars, restaurants, bookstores, parks, streets, readings, grocery stores, avenues, benches.
We kept moving forward and I didnât have a choice; I accepted heâd disappeared again.
Three years ago was the last time. I got an email heâd been attacked by four men in hoods. Somewhere up by City College.
The sun wasnât even down yet, heâd written. Somebody should make a rule.
I tried to picture a person being mugged at 136th and Amsterdam in the middle of the day. There would be so many people. I pictured the old Dominican man selling sneakers and underwear in front of the bodega, the women sitting in neon lawn chairs by the ball field. The long accordion-bellied buses, pigeons fleeing barking dogs, children running from landing pigeons. And then Jensen, a guy just like me, just exactly like me, being attacked right there in the heart of it all. Jensen wrote that heâd been able to roll away and outrun them, even after getting punched in the back of the head, even after getting kicked in the corners of his ribs. Even then, they still hadnât gotten his phone or wallet. I remember reading his email right here, at this same kitchen table.
I am still trying to picture it. Iâve never seen Ben Jensen run. I drink this beer and try.
When I think of Jensen I think of red fingerless gloves rolling cigarettes and us arguing about other poets behind their backs.
I donât deny I loved him.
When I picture the mugging, I picture a man selling sneakers and those women in lawn chairs and a black patch where Jensen should be; heâs a patch burnt from a newspaper I canât read.
I remember a time Jensen and I met for wine somewhere. When he arrived he had a patch of bruise beneath his left eye. Heâd been in Berlin for a week and an Austrian woman had thrown his own boots at him; one had kicked him in the face.
I remember he laughed as he told the story.