wonderful, evocative, detailed

It's so real - the chubby baby and the girls/sex/memories - takes you right
into the scene

but gets a teeny bit moral in the last stanza - the first line and a half is
great. could you do more of that and less of the aphorism?

Terri )O(

-----Original Message-----
From: The Pennine Poetry Works [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Bunny Goodjohn
Sent: 22 July 2002 03:47
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: sub: On the Corner of Carey and Clinch


Hi all,

Suggestions, cuts and critisizms appreciated.

At the corner of Carey and Clinch

in the church hall listening to the old man sing Folk,
I sat between the beautiful Panamanian grad
and the English professor with the thin wrists
and expensive Italian shoes. Other students
were rowed up behind us, bored and whispering
about a baby on his mother’s lap in the third row.
His white romper stained with blueberries
and crossed with spittle, his chubby knees
pumping air in time with the cracked chorus
and all the girls were wondering
when they’d have a baby,
warm and heavy on their knee.

When the elderly couple took to the floor,
waltzed across the boards, shining
in each other’s eyes with the kind of past
the rest of us just hunger for,
it happened.

Luca, he was hearing minority and for once,
it felt good. He felt part of fifteen people tapping
and sipping soda and all remembering
the first time they heard this song. Him thinking back
to his sweet mother singing outside the church
in Cerro Punta, dressed in black, and the heat
of the morning and the press of all that love.

The English Professor was listening to the music
but thinking of the girl. Back to that night
in his house when she stopped being tutored
and started teaching, how the song
had been playing on the eight-track
in his back room.

For the girls behind me, this night was trickling down
into recollection and photos to be shown to friends
and gilded with memories of waltzing
with a Tennessee High Stepper. He told each girl
she was the prettiest thing he’d seen
since the Council planted Black-Eyed Susan
on the median outside Dayton.

Me, I just kind of held on, tried to fasten the night
in my mind, realised that each moment
is a memory in the making that can transcend
to a level that sparks tears or smiles in the dark.
You’ve just got to be ready for it.

Bunny
"Sometimes a poem about a fish is just that - a poem about a fish."