Two years ago, Em killed her boyfriend. She doesn’t think that this defines her, merely that it defines her for everyone else. The murder has, of course, had certain effects on her: she won’t watch horror movies or tolerate people who yell. She won’t eat spaghetti with red sauce. She won’t let her new husband wear green, even on their honeymoon when he insists that the t-shirt is the only clean one he has, and really, it’s more of a turquoise.
Still, Em is about as adjusted as a murderer can get, which she reminds herself as she and Marco sit in their hotel bed listening to the argument escalating in the room next to them. Em can’t make out all of the words, but she hears a combination of English and Spanish, hears bitch and idiot and cunt, hears the monotone of a man who has put his train on full speed and removed the brake pedal.…
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And then there’s that thing you do where
you swing by a rope from a tree
and magically disappear
without announcing if you will reappear
or not, and everyone left standing
asks, “Where’s Ben?”, some claiming
there’s nobody by that name in our databases,
then suddenly you’re on display in a box
in a strange room filled with solemn organs
and everyone is bringing you flowers.
So we’re left wandering around from place
to place thinking if a glass is raised that somehow
you’ll rise up through the floor or start
laughing at us from behind a curtain.
Of course, this never happens but we find ourselves
on tenterhooks, thinking we’ve caught a glimpse
of you.. lucidly there.. hazily not here.…
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Michele Herman is a longtime teacher in The Writers Studio’s online program, a columnist for The Villager (for which she won the best column prize from the New York Press Association), and a translator of the work of Belgian singer/songwriter/actor/director Jacques Brel. Her first poetry chapbook, Victory Boulevard, was published this past February by Finishing Line Press and she is, as she puts it, a proud survivor of the Tupelo Press 30/30 poetry challenge.
In this episode of Cover to Cover with . . ., Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum speaks with Herman about the origin and inspirations behind Victory Boulevard, the joys of teaching creative writing workshops online, and much more!
– Michele Herman…
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You are always looking
for an adventure and
you find it in the wild
hearts of lovers
perhaps that is all
I should’ve been
an uncertainty
the soft white
of starlight
freckles
across my skin
you trace
like constellations
a flush of pink
rising to my cheeks
when your lips
whisper sins…
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On the Way Home
1. catch his eyes gleaming in evening shine behind trees still dripping raindrops / Miami puddles and saturation so you wear flip-flops everywhere / except by ‘wear’ you mean that you put them in your rucksack wander barefoot / by now, you have learned / by now, you know that your body serves as a gathering place for Chaos and her followers / a stomping ground for displaced hyperventilations / you know to let your eyes slip from contact / you know your presence is a beacon /
but it isn’t what you expect / it isn’t the heavy breaths and sweat dripping down his forehead / it’s some gentleness locked away in folds of skin towering six feet and some odd inches / it’s sad brown eyes and tongue twisters for words /
he reaches for you / but not you, your bare feet, muddied and peppered with tiny cuts / he gives up trying to form the words / first, he outlines your toes with his finger / then envelops them with his broad hands / your feet like smooth pebbles he is waiting to skip / he kneels, raising your feet to his core /
you aren’t afraid / you’re never afraid anymore / but you start to feel the tendrils of frustration against your neck / this stranger is anchoring you as you inch further and further into screaming Red Road traffic / he pantomimes each step along with you / some need of his silencing the cars that speed past /
Miami never stops for pedestrians / so eventually you weave between cars / spaces too small for his hulking frame to follow /
2.…
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I wasn’t ready for Regina Spektor. Her first song I heard was “Summer in the City,” a deep-cut my first girlfriend played in her Ford Windstar. One month later she’d pack the same van for first year at Gonzaga and a few weeks after I’d leave for a new life at the University of Oregon. We avoided talking about the eight hours of distance. We wouldn’t own cars. We didn’t know much about college, but told each other the one-and-a-half-year relationship would last—we were each other’s best friend and first sex.
Our worries masqueraded as fights about the subtext of Harry Potter, the taste of olives and the verses of a Russian anti-folk musician who I didn’t know existed until then. I strained to listen to the slow, classical piano behind lyrics about castration and cocaine and orgasms.…
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You needed help
and because I neglected to give it
your favorite ceramic cat was never found
and the reddened sheets stayed bunched in a heap
in an oversized trash bag
near the front door.
You made the mistake of falling in love
with things and ideas
and gave none of your attention
to disconsolate matters that created
the filaments of life
or caused the vendetta in your lithe hands.
I’m enamored with the idea
that your choices are cast with inevitability
and even more so with the remnant tinge
of strawberry stain that still lingers in your hair.
I may be just one of the old men drinking coffee
in a donut shop late at night
as you tend to an array of simple needs,
observing erratic orbits of sadness
or I may be a different sort of man
staring at an unshaded framework brought low
by an involuntary lapse of moon,
watching you watching them watching you.…
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