Her name was Sarah Star
and though the “Sarah” was
probably her real name,
the “Star” we weren’t so sure of.
She was one of our favorite bartenders
in one of our favorite bars,
the Scorpio on Avenue A,
and it was something like 1992
when I, going back and forth
from unemployment to temp jobs
and paying $700 a month on time,
sometimes not, for my apartment
on Avenue B, was in many ways
one of the well-off people in the
neighborhood. Sarah dressed like
a character from The Great Gatsby
and did it so well it was neither
affect nor pretense nor performance
but evidence of the manifestation
of celestial light in the souls
and shoulders of certain residents
of the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
She was short but walked tall,
thin as an alley even though she
moved like Park Avenue right below
Grand Central Station just a little
before eight in the morning. One night
after last call she asked me and my friend
to walk her home and right away
we started singing Fats Domino
to her over what was left of our bourbon,
crooning “I want to walk you home,
please let me walk you home…”
and we sang it again on the way
across town, “I want to walk you
home” even though we were already
walking her home, and we talked about
galaxies and planets, the beer and bourbon
replaced by four-in-the-morning
New York air, breathing it in like
cigarette smoke, breathing it
back out. At the door of her building
we each said good night to her,
each gave her a hug, then walked back
to our side of town feeling enormous
like the sky, like a song only Fats Domino
could have written but which we sang,
into every corner of the night,
as if it were ours. And at Bowery
and Houston, my friend and I said
our “See You Later”s and he headed up
the street toward his apartment
as I kept going east, my feet moving
like the fingers on Fats Domino’s
right hand.

-Jose Padua