From the Fishouse

Nixon and Armstrong, 1952

In the buzzy neon and fresh vinyl of LAX,
two men come together, the senator from California

and a trumpet player, they come together around
the spinning black track the baggage claim

makes and grip each other’s hand and
for a moment look like a photo and its negative.

I’m a big fan, says Nixon, smiling rich
as cream, if there’s ever anything I can do for you,

just let me know. And to the surprise of everyone,
Armstrong, his eyes shuffled down, says,

Well, suh, I got an extra bag an’ if you could grab it
I’d be grateful. And everyone’s watching now and now

Nixon’s grin falls a little
but he’s a little too good at his job

to be rattled and snatches the bag and carries it
through customs while the merry snickers

of the band follow him the way a wake follows a boat
into the dock. A blue marl of sky clouds the glasses

of the men who stand sentry around the senator
as the two men move toward the black silk

of their limos and Armstrong opens up
his picket-fence smile and takes the bag back

with a shuck and a nod to the other layers
of the story, race riots and war, the thicket

of heat rising up the manzanita hills, lies ready to brushfire
their way through the American experience. And given

all he was and all that will happen—black-capped
burglars with their satchels, wiretaps hissing on the line—

I’m only too happy to show you Nixon humiliated here,
but who’s to say that’s the story. The future’s still

blank as the glasses of the senator’s men.
A circus of hands gathers the bags and stacks them

in the trunks of cars as the sunlight sloughs off
the twin airlines parked nose to nose in the blooming heat.

Nixon knew what it meant to make a man a fool, but
Armstrong knew customs would never search

the senator and find the quarter pound
of Jamaican Pearl he’d hidden in that bag.