Poem: After My Reading in New York City

After My Reading in New York City

After my reading, a young woman in jeans 

and a lavender tee shirt approaches me.  

“You insulted my profession,” she says.  

“What profession?” I ask.  “I’m a prostitute.”  

I apologize to her and do a lot of backpedaling.  

“You know people think we’re prostitutes because 

we like sex. We do it for the money,” she says. 

I apologize again, and then make it worse by saying, 

“I think your profession might be dangerous. You are 

taking care of yourself, aren’t you?” and I pat her 

on the arm, turning myself into her grandmother.  

“Oh yes,” she says, “the older women tell us what to do.” 

It isn’t often that I can’t think of anything to say, 

but at the moment, no more words come, not of apology 

or excuse or explanation.  Like a car that has stalled, 

I sputter out another apology.  When I am leaving, I wave at her, 

though she is looking at me as though she’d like to run me over, 

and I wonder what planet I come from that I think waving at her 

would be appropriate, just like I blow a kiss to my Hasidic student 

even after he jumped away from me earlier in the day when 

I tried to hug him and he shouted, “No, only my wife is allowed 

to touch me.”  My friend says, “Why is it whenever you get near 

him, you touch him, you touch his arm,  reach out toward him?  

He may have to go upstairs and take a shower when you do that.” 

What little devil inside me, made me blow him a kiss when he 

is presenting at an academic conference, and I can only hope 

he doesn’t have to take a bath again.  He’ll end up being 

the cleanest man at the conference, thanks to me.

by Maria Mazziotti Gillan
from Ancestors Song

---

---

Maria Mazziotti Gillan's new poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Other recent publications are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow and the poetry collections What Blooms in Winter and The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets which pairs her poems with her paintings. Maria's artist's website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.