Alcohol
That weekend in Brooklyn she gave you a couple hours
to go see if you could write something. The whole idea
seemed futile. But she was willing to stay
in the Airbnb with your three-year-old daughter
while eight-weeks pregnant. You’d lose that one,
soon thereafter, on the day Bourdain took his life.
Be a traveler, not a tourist is something he said.
You took a couple books and a long yellow pad
to a narrow cafe with a long narrow table
over long leather benches, which were also quite narrow,
and you felt narrow, too.
Or dreadful, because you only had four ideas
in your iPhone notes and you knew
you’d be too narrow to see them through
to something worthwhile:
*sorrow of failure of imagination + time
*guilt/terror/withdrawal after vacations
in youthful expensive locales
*diff of finishing a thought
*sorrow of possibility of missed connections
in quiet moments with daughter who will want to know
about strange suggestive faces of cartoon animals
When you took off your backpack and winced too loudly
at a persistent soreness in your shoulder, the pretty barista
hated you briefly on her otherwise pleasant morning.
The coffee smelled strong. Everyone could see
what everyone was reading. You bought a $12 Heineken.
A young man was reading NYRB in a smart fedora
and see-through salmon t-shirt, starring as the leanest,
brightest human in all the rooms of himself. His hair
was thinning beneath the fedora, knew the barista.
An older woman in a lilac scarf was reading Carson’s
Men in the Off Hours. She looked distinguished
or transcendent with metaphysical meaning
thought the barista, unlike that guy (you)
with his midwestern mien and faded Heineken wince.
The woman stared hard at your book — Dugan’s Collected —
and you expected her to say something about Dugan
but instead she asked if you wrote poems (not poetry).
You said “Badly” or “Doesn’t everyone in Brooklyn?”
and she smiled. Or smirked. You forget what you said.
Whatever it was, to a careful reader like herself,
it must’ve sounded flippant, aloof, evasive, curt, buff
-oonish, almost (flowing from your furrowed face,
you fear) belligerent — a conversation ender.
You could’ve read “Apology (to the Muse)” and “Tourist Poem”
and “On a Seven-Day Diary” and “Untitled Poem” (p. 272)
and “Swing Shift Blues” and found out what she thought.
Would that have been weird? Looking back, you think not.
You were at a coffee shop in Brooklyn and she asked
about poems reading Carson in an elegant scarf.
She might’ve been a real poet. Might’ve told you
a thing you needed to know. Sorry tourist
that you are, you let the moment go.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
Kent State
You teach at Bama? Went to Kent with Nick
Saban. Roomed with a friend of his girlfriend.
Hell yes in ‘70. We were there. Here, let me put
this drink down before I spill it and my husband
takes me out on the boat tomorrow and you
never hear from me again. Kidding. Kidding.
No, really, it’s like I said earlier. I was raised
in a family where the pistol was king. Man raises
a firearm in your direction, best believe it’s loaded.
That’s how I was raised. Chuck’ll tell you. See
now this is why I put my drink down. Look here
let me tell you about those “kids.” My classmates.
Because I saw how they were. When National Guard
comes in, Governor Rhodes and all that, best believe
they won’t be firing blanks. I mean that’s just
common sense! The girl in the famous photo. I think
the guy won a Pewlitzer. Paper called her “clean cut.”
Well. I knew her from gymnastics class. Pretty.
Long-limbed like our Katie had before God
took her for Himself. Clean cut? My fat ass. Bare-
foot. Stringy hair she must’ve thought looked
dramatic or romantic. Doubt she bathed twice a month.
Pity the paramedics. Get the hell off my campus.
I sometimes think. I think if we’d been friends,
in a study group or something. Just be cool! Wasn’t
that the whole thing? But we can’t be the firemen
of other people’s burning souls, is what my daddy
always told me. Where’s his damn Pewlitzer! You know
they canceled the rest of my chemistry class. And I
was a chemistry major! Any idea how hard it is
to take a chemistry final through correspondence?