David Rivard
For a short time it would happen whenever
paging through a book I felt betrayed,
say by an almanac of birds
reminding me of a heaven where judgment might be rendered
exclusively
according to the supremacy of feather
or the elegance of song.
Or when I leaned forward
those rainy summer evenings
to hear how the wind
with its sluicing & sleep-rattling
put into my ear the nearly noiseless slice of fins--
what some others have called the whistle
of the conquerors, of the rich, & the officials--
the slice of fins
cutting across a passage of smooth blue water
bringing me their hellos.
Whenever I leaned like that it happened.
Happened
whenever I felt most like myself,
when words,
their failures waving farewell,
selected me as the one who would put down the thing
many others had also overheard Hagler say
in Provincetown
in 1984 by an indoor swimming pool in a hotel
where from the walls surrounding his training-camp boxing ring
we all were eyed
by the untethered & absurdly optimistic depictions,
the nearly adolescent shyness
the ghost-insulting smell,
of the Pilgrims John & Priscilla Alden--
those murals of them
embodying an uncomplicated innocence,
though they had crossed an ocean, an ocean,
their longings looking rosy & blurred,
romantic,
obviously & contemptuously unlike my own or Marvin Hagler's
surname Marvelous,
then the middleweight title-holder & now
memorizing his lines for a deodorant commercial
featuring famous ex-jocks.
It happened.
It happened when he ducked,
bobbed, & to no one in particular
said
if they cut my bald head open
all they'll find is one big boxing glove.
And it happened & would happen & for a short time
each time I believed in something,
my anger
and the ones I knew I hated.
Tables of Content
Seventeen (Fall 2003)
Sixteen (Spring 2003)
Fifteen (Fall 2002) Fourteen (Spring 2002)
Thirteen
(Fall 2001) Twelve (Spring 2001)
Eleven (Fall 2000)
Ten (Spring 2000)
Nine (Fall 1999) Eight (Spring 1999)
Seven, (Fall 1998) Six, (Spring 1998)
Five (Fall 1997) Four (Winter/Spring 1997)
Three (Summer/Fall 1996) Two (Winter 1996)