we can’t take care of you all your
life!
I’m 15 now, I told him, I won’t be around
much longer.
but look at you, you just sit around in your room
all day! other
boys have jobs, paper routes, Jim Stover works
as an usher at the
Bayou!
HOW IN THE HELL ARE YOU GOING TO
SURVIVE IN THIS
WORLD?
I don’t
know …
you make me SICK! sometimes, having a son like
you, I wish I was
dead.
well, he did die, he died more than 30 years
ago.
and last year I paid
$59,000 income
tax.
there are some people who will
phone a man at 7 a.m.
when he is desperately sick and
hungover.
I always greet
these idiots
with a few violent
words
and the slamming
down of the
receiver
knowing that their
morning eagerness
means that
they retired early
and thus wasted the
preceding
night
(and most likely
the preceding days, weeks and
years).
that they could
imagine
that
I’d want to
converse with
them
at 7 a.m.
is an insult
to
whatever
intelligent life
is left
in our dwindling
universe.
he hung the green Cadillac
almost straight up and down
standing on its nose
against the phone pole
next to the
All-American Hamburger
Hut.
I was
in the laundromat
with my girlfriend when
we heard the sound of it.
when we got there
the driver had
dropped out of the car
and run off.
and there was the
green Caddy
standing straight
up and down
against
the phone pole.
it was one of the most
magnificent sights
I had seen
in years:
in the 9 p.m. moonlight
it just stood there—
the people gathered
the people stood back
knowing the Caddy
could come crashing down
at any moment
but it didn’t
it just stood there
straight as an arrow
alongside
the phone pole.
how the hell
they were going to get
that down
without wrecking it
was beyond me.
my girlfriend wanted to
wait and see how
they did it
but we hadn’t
had dinner
yet
and I
talked her into
going back into the
laundromat and then
back to my place.
I was not
mechanically inclined
and it pissed
me off
to watch people
who were.
anyhow
about noon
the next day
when I went out to
buy a newspaper
the green Caddy
was gone.
there was just
an old bum
at the counter
in the All-American
having a coffee
but I had already seen
the real miracle
and I
walked back to
my place
satisfied.
one of the problems is
that when most people
sit down to write a poem
they think,
“now I am going to write a
poem”
and then
they go on to write a poem
that
sounds like a poem
or what they think
a poem should sound like.
this