{"id":411,"date":"2017-04-12T14:51:39","date_gmt":"2017-04-12T14:51:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/floridareview.cah.ucf.edu\/?post_type=article&p=411"},"modified":"2017-04-12T14:51:39","modified_gmt":"2017-04-12T14:51:39","slug":"three-poems","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/three-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

EMERGENCY: I FLING<\/h3>\n
open the call box\u2014\nthe black phone handle, barraged\nwith red fire ants.<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
LONELY COUPLE<\/h3>\n
Hugh and I started a band called Lonely Couple\nand wrote a song by the same name.\nWe only performed it a handful of times, in Boston,\nwhere were undergrads. I was the lead singer,\nI thought though, looking back, we harmonized:\n\nWilfred Bourgeois, you\u2019re part of us\nAnd this is a song for you<\/em>\n\nSo I guess I was simply a singer without an instrument.\n\nOur friends have left us all alone\nAt this lonely table for two.\nWilfred, would you marry us?\nIt\u2019s the hardest thing to do\u2026<\/em>\n\nI played the accordion and keyboard\nbut we didn\u2019t own either. Hugh strummed a guitar\nwith a colorful strap from Guatemala. He\u2019d make\nme dinner at his Kenmore Square apartment\u2014\nusually spaghetti with ketchup\nthat he thought was the same thing\nas tomato sauce. I didn\u2019t have the heart to tell him\nthere was such a thing as jarred Ragu, and besides,\nit actually tasted good. This was what marriage was\nabout in the abstract, learning to love another\u2019s innocence\nand quirks. He was dreamy as he played his chords,\nbut we knew he was headed for the Peace Corps\nand I for grad school. Wilfred Bourgeois,\nmy uncle, had visited us and made quite an impression,\nso much so that we put him in a song.\nHe had lost his wife when she was young\nand never remarried. Maybe we saw him as a romantic\u2014\nand that Hugh and I would love each other more\nif we weren\u2019t together forever. But it occurs to me now\nhow smart we were not to pin each other down,\nhow we drifted on without too much drama.\nWe populated our band with classmates, theater\nor music majors, who came and went.\nSome would later become famous\nfor sex addiction or Wall Street banking.\nOne of these guys had a girlfriend in cosmetology school\nwho teased my hair with a tiny pronged comb\nso I could more resemble Kate Pierson from the B52s.\nI knew how to shake on stage, but grew stiff\nif someone tried to take me home after the show.\nI wasn\u2019t married to Hugh and never would be,\nbut we had loyalty and respect. I\u2019m remembering him\nand all this, which I\u2019m surely remembering\nat least partially wrong, because I found the lyrics\nof our one and only original song\nin Hugh\u2019s perfect penmanship. It was folded\nin the laminated menu of an Indian restaurant\nwhere we apparently performed once\nfor a samosa and dal.<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
ODE TO THE AMPERSAND<\/h3>\n
& what one reviewer calls\nthe \u201csly female squiggle\u201d\nin reviewing Julie\u2019s new book\nwhich is full of ampersands\n& magic that makes me see\nthe ampersand\u2019s tilted hip,\none leg folded up & sat upon.\nThe Latin curvy cursive,\n& her French cousin, the treble clef,\nwere my favorite symbols\nto draw as a kid. How easy it was then\nto conflate words & music. The &\nfolded one leg atop the opposite\nknee, a calf draped below,\na foot hooked, dangling a shoe.\nThe appeal of all that coiling\n& twirling, notes & script\u2014\none definition, I suppose, of verse.\nO, ampersand, you bring\ntwo names closer together\nthan even the word \u201cand,\u201d\nwhich, according to the Writers Guild,\nsimply means that those credited\nworked on the same screenplay\nbut quite possibly at different times,\nmaybe one even rewriting\nthe other\u2019s work. An ampersand\nbetween writers\u2019 names\nmeans that the two\nwere in the same room, collaborating\nside by side, & though technically\nI write this ode alone, it is really\nwith Julie Marie Wade (poet)\n& Sarah Sarai (reviewer)\nwho make me remember\nhow much I loved to draw\nthe ampersand & treble clef\n& play the keyboard\nwhich I learned from Mr. Solek\nwho was a member of a polka band\ncalled The Happy Bachelors,\n& he did seem happy\nas an adult who wasn\u2019t part\nof a Mr. & Mrs. or a Mr. and Mrs.\nThe Dating Game<\/em> was big then.\n\u201cBachelorette Number One,\nif the whole world were listening,\nwhat would you say?\u201d The cover\nof the Bachelors\u2019 album was pink\nwhich didn\u2019t imply anything\nto me at the time, but now I wonder\nif those bachelors were gay\u2014\nMr. & Mr. or Mr. and Mr.\u2014\nor simply young & hetero\n& capitalizing on their single status\nlike boy bands do now.\nThe Bachelors recorded together\nin a studio, twisting horns\n& button accordions,\nthe \u201csly female squiggle\u201d\na part of all creation. I listened\nto the album on my parents\u2019\nrecord player & imagined\nall the kinds of adultness\nI could possibly one day inhabit,\nall the associations of sound & symbol\n& word. I thrilled at the polka music\nthat lived inside the polka dot,\nthe pulsating bouncing ball\nin the \u201cSing Along with Mitch,\u201d\nthe seed that would one day blossom\ninto karaoke. Yesterday\nthe Supreme Court\nstruck down DOMA\nwhich meant a lot of celebration\n& yet this morning we read\nthat the ruling won\u2019t help couples\nin the 35 states that have laws against\ngay marriage & sometimes an \u201c&\u201d\nfeels more like a \u201cbut.\u201d \u201cBachelorette\nNumber Two, if you could live anywhere,\nwhere would that be?\u201d I download\nthe actual ruling & am soon adrift\nin legalese. Nothing & everything\nhas seemed to change this 27th day\nof June in the year 2013.\nMy sister & her husband celebrate\ntheir 32nd anniversary\nin Florida, where two women\nin love can\u2019t wed. I\u2019m in Portugal\nwhere transportation workers,\nfed up with austerity measures, strike,\nbut those who can afford it\nflag down taxis, the drivers of which\nare happy for the extra work.\nOne tells me about his memories\nof the Carnation Revolution\n&, because he was a kid\nwhen it happened, how\nhe thought every conflict\nfrom there on in would be solved\nwith flowers in rifle muzzles.\nI feel the same nostalgia for\nRoe vs. Wade &, since I was a kid\nwhen it passed, I am dismayed\nWendy Davis had to filibuster\ntwo nights ago in Texas.\n\u201cBachelorette Number Three,\nif you could travel back or forward\nin time, what year would you visit\nand why?\u201d How easy it is for me\neven now to conflate words & music,\nmemory & fact,\n& that one simple afternoon\nwhen I wrote my first song\nin the book Mr. Solek\ngave me, the pages lined\nwith staffs, & I made my ornate\ntreble clef, & writing\nwas writing, & marriage\nwas in a far off key\nI could barely hear, & then I made\nan ordinary sandwich\n& read the liner notes\non The Happy Bachelors\u2019 LP sleeve\n& each ampersand flipped\nto become shoulders & arms,\nhugs between each musician\u2019s name.\n\n<\/pre>\n
“Ode to the Ampersand” references Sarah Sarai’s review<\/a> of Julie Marie Wade’s book Postage Due<\/em> (White Pine Press, 2013) in Lambda Literary<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
open the call box\u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":409,"template":"","categories":[9,49,119],"tags":[172,173,174,175,176,111,177,178,179,180,181,182,183,184,185],"class_list":["post-411","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-literary-features","category-poetry","tag-b52s","tag-carnation-revolution","tag-denise-duhamel","tag-doma","tag-emergency","tag-julie-marie-wade","tag-kate-pierson","tag-lonely-couple","tag-ode-to-the-ampersand","tag-roe-v-wade","tag-sarah-sarai","tag-the-dating-game","tag-the-happy-bachelors","tag-wendy-davis","tag-wilfred-bourgeois"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThree Poems - The Florida Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/three-poems\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Three Poems - 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