← v2n2, Fall 2003
Poetry · Volume 2, Number 2

Cortland, 1970

Always Monday, light October drizzle

misting our hair, wet-

wool musk of our peacoats.

Remember your father's library?

Three-for-a-buck novels,

all the rosy headlights

he could dream, group-gropes he couldn't.

Breakfast was beer in a jelly

glass. Then the ten-block walk,

hardscrabble shacks

imploding, to swing shift

at Smith Corona. I still have the scar

acid etched through my jeans

that first night. Peeling them down

in the ladies' room, I found a black

circle the size of a quarter.

In May we married between small claims

and traffic courts, my mother

sweating in cheap mink, the best man

sniffling, aching to get straight.