Rochester

February 13, 2014

Rochester

Your apartment was empty.

Dark. Your family

one thousand miles away,

in a place with more sun,

in a city less bleak and...

Not depressing. Just

lonely. For now.

You might have made some friends,

some people to share a drink,

a cigar, a conversation

after work,

on weekends.

But what did you tell yourself

in the tired mornings

in the empty apartment

to get up for breakfast

and the daily commute?

What should I

tell myself?

Julie

February 8, 2014

Julie 

Tractors.

That’s how she starts the story,

her mouth taking a shape between

grin and grimace. Tractors.

I see her mind working

backwards, trying to recall

each detail as it was

or should have been

the first time. This

was not her first time

“at the rodeo,” or so she termed it,

so after a few boring hours

sitting on the couch in his parents’ house,

watching TV and occasionally making out,

she lets him lead her up the stairs to his room

where they find each other

under the cover of sheets

and darkness.

Afterwards, rolling over,

he reaches for a lamp that for some reason

revs like an engine, then illuminates

the room in bright John Deere green and yellow:

John Deere wallpaper, John Deere

photographs, John Deere models

on the dresser. Tractors

everywhere.

She might have yelped in horror, might have hid

her face in a John Deere pillow.

Me, I would have laid back and laughed.

How perfect this was, what a testament

to the sharp thrill of gasoline,

an engine’s sudden excitement,

to fields plowed fresh and new.

University of Virginia, Gymnasium

February 7, 2014

University of Virginia, Gymnasium

What about her made you stop

and notice, in a gym full

of sweat and clanking weights?

Was it something about her eyes, or her muscle,

or the way her hair was pulled back

as she did her set of bicep curls, or squats?

The way you tell it,

you had just been saying to a buddy of yours

that you were done with the dating scene,

that you were ready just to find a girl and settle down,

when you walked into the gym

and found her.

I’m sure you didn’t know then how this would lead

to joyrides in her beloved baby-blue T-bird,

or taking sunny pictures together in front of the Leaning Tower,

or raising three blond children whom you would call raccoons,

or owning a big blue fifteen-seater van good for road trips and wind-surfing excursions

and moving your family across the country, twice.

But in that moment, I think I know

what it was that caught your attention:

it was her mouth.

Not the small bump below the lower lip,

which you would grow to love

(and which I would inherit),

but the way her teeth were gritted and her lips were set,

a thin line of determination

against gravity,

against any natural force,

against the thought coursing through her own blood

that no, this is impossible as she made her muscles move

again and again, weight after weight.

It was her mouth that showed the moment

when ease ends and strength begins.

It was her mouth that made you stop and think,

“I could get along with a girl like that.”