Just One of Those Things

Sarah Perrier

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781612773520
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

"Like Cole Porter, Sarah Perrier turns a world-weary and tender gaze toward the unruly carnival we call love. Perrier shrugs off the post-modern shrugs. In these elegant, wise-cracking, and subversive poems, the inherent estrangement, deception, and screwball comedy of romance is revealed and savored. With the smarts and prescience of Lear's fool, with the mischief of both Ariel and Caliban, she gene-slices the comic into the tragic, the tragic into the comic, to make a new and radiantly original poetry." –Eric Pankey

FRESH

I.

When Kevin Miller’s mother called me fresh

before swaying up her driveway I didn’t know

her New Jersey twang was from New Jersey

or that when she called me

fresh she meant to make me

sorrier than her son was for the game

he started with kisses. I ran after him

until his wrist was fast in my grip

and his belly was flat in the dirt. The soft

pop of his skin beneath my teeth

is still as fresh as the sting in my mouth

where I stretched it sore at the corners.

His mother stopped in her tracks when I spat

the missing bit of his dirty cotton shirt at her heels

and she spat back with fresh. Suppose his response

had been that sharp. Suppose my kneecaps

hadn’t cracked two of his twiggy ribs

and left him forgetting how to handle

his next breath. Suppose he had been

heels-dug-in stubborn and refused to run.

The messages our bodies send us

and deliver us from—quick as currents

running to ground—snap and arc

under the force of our telling (the synapse

filters flash and the story is recast):

If he hadn’t run away, he could have won.

And now if the knot of his scar could untie itself

and slip back into skin, it would only be

one more thing he left behind

when I watched his mother load half

a houseful of her, her wisdom

and her furniture, onto a truck

and head back to New Jersey.

II.

Before he began, the dentist shook

his thumb over his right shoulder, asked me

if I “wanted one like that.” Kevin Miller

was long gone, and my trophy—my chipped

incisor was filed smooth. By summer, I learned

to throw out a hip and to carry a comb.

I hung out at the corner of Rollerskate

and Ten Speed with a pack of cigarettes

I knew how to light but couldn’t yet

smoke. On the corner

we played “Truth” and let

the good lies slide until Nicole

Ryan dared Steve Swisher to a game,

then fired off a pack of lies.

Had she, or would she ever? Yeah.

With a boy? Yeah. With Brian

Wilburne? We were gonna but

he just had his braces tightened.

With a girl? No way, Steve.

You’re the only queer I know.

And none of us said a word.

Then Megan, who knew about sins

of omission, heard her mother call, and Ruth,

who always played by the rules, said it was hers.

Then Ben and Adam Morgan rode off

without a word. Nicole spat out...