Courtship I gave you crabs and you let us pretend that it might have been you who gave them to me and that was so lovely. On our first proper date you wore penny loafers and never wore them again and I never thanked you for that. Second date and I cried at dinner, just sobbed and sobbed until my tears became a stream with little fish in it. On Fire Island that summer we rented a small sailboat though we didn’t really know how to sail and as the ferry barreled down on us I’m so glad we got the big fight out of our system. And that night as your friends and I played Trivial Pursuit or Pictionary (who can remember after all these years?) you sat by yourself on the couch and read How We Die and that, my love, that is when I knew for sure. Let’s not even talk about the cat.
Proposal Pauline Kael wrote that Divine’s performance in Hairspray has a “what-the-hell quality” the film needs. I feel the same way about our marriage, don’t you? Here’s our joke: When I said I was “ready to take the next step” you thought I meant marriage when what I really meant was dessert. (Our son likes to tell that one.) Is it true? Does it matter? I can’t remember that far back and we were probably drunk anyway. But you know what they say – in every joke there’s a grain of truth. What did I mean? Nobody talked about marriage in those days. Commitment, I suppose – a willingness to stick with it. But whatever it was I offered you accepted, one link in a long necklace of what-the-hells, Divine as Edna Turnblad in her sleeveless cotton dress, ironing and tutting and calling out to her daughter, shaking her head and ironing some more.
On My Morning Walk It Occurs to Me that My Name is Similar to Billy Collins A man is doing lunges in the park but I don’t even notice him until I take a picture of the remarkable sunrise and send it to the family group chat (no response, still asleep?) and there he is in the lower right corner. I suppose he wants to make efficient use of time, stuck as he is flinging the dog ball over and over and over again. And then it dawns on me. How have I never thought of it before? After all, I was Billy until what, college? Despite the humiliating songs, my burning fourth-grade face – Can you bake a cherry pie, Billy Boy, Billy Boy? Billy, don’t be a hero, don’t be a fool with your life. And now here is the part of the poem where you say OK, Billy, but what about the last name? Hear me out: Whenever I try to say it and my throat closes up as it always does and the thin sound threads its way out people look at me, puzzled, and say Collins? The man in the park is still doing lunges as I head home, take down a few books and study the dust jackets. Not a bad looking guy when he was younger, kind of sexy even if you’re into imps. I read. You know, I never gave my mother a lanyard like Billy did, my mother who named me though I did make her an ashtray once, blue misshapen thing. It sat on her desk for years collecting ashes from the cigarettes that would have killed her if the Alzheimer’s hadn’t gotten to her first. Well. I see now that it’s time for my own dog’s walk. He glances over at me just once, his second-string demigod, as he leads my husband right out the front door.
Mr. Hollands Explains His Tattoo to His Students Early October. I know it’s coming. We’re discussing To Kill a Mockingbird and a hand shoots up in the back: Mr. Hollands, what does your tattoo mean? The other students, previously semi- comatose, perk up, grateful for their classmate’s audacity. They wait. I know what it means, their question. It means oh Mr. Hollands we like you sort of, maybe, not completely sure yet, please be a little real with us, please tell us something real. Three black bars on my right forearm, an early late middle age addition. I don’t know what it means. They wait. So I lie to them. I say This is my family. One bar for my husband One for our son One for me. Three individuals making a whole. They seem semi-satisfied. One girl says Aw. We return to the book. Atticus tells his children it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird and I explain that the mockingbird represents innocence when probably it was just something Harper Lee’s father said and she remembered it because she loved and hated her father as so many of us do. My students write mockingbird = innocence. And I stand in front of the class. Like an idiot magician I place my hand over the tattoo and watch it disappear. When I take my hand away it reappears. Next up: Macbeth
The Great Poet Said I have a stack of unfinished poems in my drawer – many there for years, decades – some missing just a word, one perfect word. Nodding undergraduate heads. Thirty years go by. I’m eating lunch outside, the construction workers are glistening, and I think Really? Just one word? How about frisson? That’s a good word. I’ve been wanting to put frisson into one of my poems for a while now, but here you take it. I’m just going to eat my ham sandwich and look at the scenery. Or maybe you need a verb? What about eavesdrop? I like eavesdrop because the more you stare at it the weirder it gets: eavesdrop, eavesdrop, eaves- drop – see what I mean? I’m almost done with my Doritos. Shirts are coming off. I assume you’re not looking for an adjective or adverb, nobody likes those anymore, but I recently read a Denise Levertov poem where she used pompously. It was so great! I bet she wouldn’t mind if you used it, too. She’s dead anyway. Buried in a cemetery near where I live, in fact. What else? Pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections (whew!) – I mean, you’re the expert here but there just aren’t that many of those so I really don’t think it should take you decades. Alright, I’ve finished my cookie, and the men are singing now, can you believe it? I can’t quite make out the words, I’m not even sure what language it is but that’s ok, they sound fantastic and I get the gist.
*****
Bill Hollands is a teacher and poet in Seattle, where he lives with his husband and their son. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Rattle, North American Review, The American Journal of Poetry, DIAGRAM, Hawai`i Pacific Review, The Account, The Summerset Review, and elsewhere. He was recently named a finalist for North American Review’s James Hearst Poetry Prize.
