Poem for Tuesday and Glen Echo Ruins

Derrick Poem (The Lost World)
By Terrance Hayes

I take my $, buy a pair of very bright kicks for the game
at the bottom of the hill on Tuesday w / Tone who averages
19.4 points a game, & told me about this spot, & this salesman
w / gold ringed fingers fitting a $100 dollar NBA Air Avenger
over the white part of me–my sock, my heel & sole,
though I tell him Avengers are too flashy & buy blue & white
Air Flights w / the dough I was suppose to use to pay
the light bill & worse, use the change to buy an Ella
Fitzgerald CD at Jerrys, then take them both in a bag
past salesmen & pedestrians to the C where there is a girl
I'd marry if I was Pablo Neruda & after 3, 4 blocks, I spill out
humming "April in Paris" while a lady w / a 12 inch cigar
calls the driver a facist cuz he won't let her smoke on the bus
& skinny Derrick rolls up in a borrowed Pontiac w / room
for me, my kicks & Ella on his way to see The Lost World
alone & though I think the title could mean something else,
I give him some skin & remember the last time I saw him
I was on the B-ball court after dark w / a white girl
who'd borrowed my shorts & the only other person out
was Derrick throwing a Spalding at the crooked rim
no one usually shoots at while I tried not to look his way
& thought how we used to talk about black women
& desire & how I was betraying him then creeping out
after sundown with a girl in my shorts & white skin
that slept around me the 5 or 6 weeks before she got tired
of late night hoop lessons & hiding out in my crib
there at the top of the hill Derrick drove up still talking,
not about black girls, but dinosaurs which if I was listening
could have been talk about loneliness, but I wasn't,
even when he said, "We should go to the movies sometime,"
& stopped.

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My Monday was a movie day! Adam had county assessment exams and Daniel went out to lunch with my father, so and I went out to pick up savory and dessert crepes and came home to watch The Madness of King George, which I have not watched in many years -- so long that I hadn't realized Ian Holm played Dr. Willis and I didn't know who Jim Carter was. Helen Mirren, Nigel Hawthorne and the Ruperts were as good as I had remembered.

In the afternoon after Daniel returned and Paul finished work, we went to see The Avengers. I had to whisper questions to Delta about things I didn't know because I didn't see Iron Man 2 or Captain America (though I'd like to see the latter now, because he's adorable), but I enjoyed the movie more than I expected given my general apathy toward comic-based movies and I really liked Scarlett Johansson, who can be hit-or-miss for me. (No one's ever going to make me fall for Tony Stark.) Is it bad if Loki's spear and magic helmet always make me want to sing the Bugs Bunny version of Wagner?

We owed Adam's friend Daniel pizza because we told him we'd get him dinner if he helped us move Daniel out of College Park, so we had him over for dinner, then he asked if we could watch The Fellowship of the Ring because he'd never seen it. We only made it about halfway through since it's a school night but I haven't seen that in a long time either and it's always a delight to revisit. Here are some amusement park ruin photos from Glen Echo on Saturday: