Attachment: Atlantic City Pimp

Left of the @ sign the email address
was ethnically gendered with the nonce
noun sistah, which, I have to confess,

I scoffed at, thinking it was from some self-
discovering student of mine, before realizing it was
my aunt who sent the jpeg from her cell

phone. My aunt who doesn’t mind
a bit of shell if it means getting all the crabmeat,
who is known to only leave behind

enough of a tip to shame the wait staff
for their inattention. The subject line read:
“AC Pimp” as if her painted nails and belly laugh

made her expert in the fauna of pimps, a soul-stirred
savant of things cold-blooded. As if she could
divine an ivory handled Derringer holstered

at his breast icing the steel heart cognate
to the gun, that twin ventriloquist of tinder
and sulfur dust, that rhythmic and delicate

organ pumping like a fist that has a knack
for snake eyes and the superfluity of bruises
that follow every spaghetti-strapped back-

talker’s doubt. She must have thought
she’d reached her brother, my father, who harbors
like a gold molar a taste for robin egg and mauve

pocket squares, a flourish of trim, a hand-stitch,
lapels check striped and foreshortened
like tyrannosaurus arms and ostrich

print Stacy Adams to match. The modest,
feathered derby contrasting all those boas
festooning street lamps and mail boxes.

But my aunt is no mere expert.
“AC” may have been a random tag,
but that word “Pimp” bore the import

of all us do-wrong men. She was, in effect,
signifying—the kind of humor that waters
the eye, the doubletalk, the shadow dialect.

Like her spite-tinged smile at a bridal
shower, her patina of derision enlivened
the photo. My aunt, who refuses to settle

for a man less Christian than she is finds
everywhere despicable men. Hence the dozens
via email, the critique, like a razor inside

a roll of twenties, the currency
of our vengeance economy. Perhaps
there was an untroubled sea

just beyond the garish casinos behind him,
a stilt-walker or mime outside the frame,
a carnival and boardwalk where the horizon

would be, and a tour bus full of people waving.
Of all the images that might speak to something
inside her, this was the one she found worth saving.