1964/1980
880 Words
natural. Now become/the person in your life. Start writing autobiography.” (B. Watten)
I
didn’t burn up the high school track. Cross-country still less of a glory sport. Two miles, like my walk to school. Not bad for my generation. That, and a morning paper route, built stamina. The letter contained no fess point pictogram, no winged shoe like track, only an alphabetic device, “CC.” The literate understood. I wore the sweater each Friday, just like the other jocks. I gave it to my girlfriend. A dozen years later I got it back again, her name sewn in, two moth holes in back. I wear it now, around the yard, among friends who think it’s from a garage sale. It doesn’t signify “City College.” I don’t go to garage sales. I haven’t run, really, in twenty years. The half mile in spring, two laps, catching the pack in the last back stretch, coming close. I think of jogging, marathon running. The late kick worked better in cross-country, where I had hills to help me. A disguise for laziness? No winged shoe sweater because summer came too fast. Fall
Jo
at the ends of his last laps, her shoulder fitting his armpit as he walked to catch his breath. Her house was a two block walk up a winding street. They never went all the way; they came close. “Together” for three years, two in colleges two thousand, then thirty, miles apart. Telephones and commuter busses, last goodbye in San Francisco where he had hills to help him. The beginning more exciting. They walked off the front porch through backyard trees behind her birthday party to his first “real” kissing. Seventeen in a midwest suburb, good kids into their senior year. She spent six weeks in club foot casts, an operation for high heels. She knitted him a sweater, blue, then. I supply what he can’t remember. The shape of her small breasts, the puff of down dark hair. She had twin sisters, a doctor-father, a dachshund, a cat with a crumpled ear, an ivy-covered house, freckles. “Twin shirts,” a green paisley design, button-down collars. He wore most collars half up behind, he was
between start and finish you are not the
two years later M wrote
the stillness behind the line straining to cross leaning leaning left right left forward faces at the first white flag across the the gun the pack pushing sideways spreading up and the clomp clomp clomp across old asphalt so many god they’re all up there lean left right left right inhale exhale get in rhythm! passing one two and tightness in the crotch long stride feeling so free the path and the grass the acorns bruising feet through thin-soled shoes sky and the edge of the hill and the long descent down in the mountains there you feel free don’t fight let go falling to stay erect one two three four five six seven second road round tree leaning forward on the ascent fire in the the burning the bridge the crowd flows so many a never ending rout of soles in pain my nose splitting the hill won’t stop no along with the path and the cliff and the trees and the pain and the
in “creative writing” class
16 Sentences
(or perpendicular) right-to-right and left-to-left, the angles are equal.” The West Side was another country. Our best sports were tennis and golf, which I didn’t play. Many of us were National Merit finalists. Paul Newman graduated from Shaker the year I was born. We built a rocket for a science fair, but it didn’t go off. I remember the square slow music of dancing class in country club ballrooms after dark. Delivering newspapers at six in the morning, six below. Eichmann, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Castro, Vostok I. We went to “Canteen” on Friday nights, dances Saturdays, parties, movies, football games. “I Remember Mama.” They called us “Shaker Heights Institute of Technology” on the starting line. Buddy Holly, Sam Cooke, and the Big Bopper, dead. “Don’t drink milk the day of a meet, and don’t eat spinach at all.” I lost the captaincy of the chess team in a summer match with a weaker player. Some smoked cigarets, drank 3.2 beer, marijuana, lsd, several years away. “If the sides of two angles are parallel
the (M/e)n
M wears his watch on the inside of his wrist after Jeff Lincoln, twenty years ago. A “natural runner,” Jeff won without workouts . After an arrest for buying 3.2 beer with an altered driver’s license and an accident that pierced both his lungs, he lettered at a prep school, and shone among them. M hung out in those days with the track team, and some others, second class. One Halloween M. Jeff, and John Battle put cigaret fuses on firecrackers outside Miss Pettingale’s dancing class. Saw how they ran. John’s feet were so small he mail-ordered track shoes. Rick Paul didn’t run, but they played chess while they walked to school. Sometimes M called himself “George Arter” because George, who didn’t run, took his girl. Years later Chuck Spear added chord changes. M lost an election and was sorry he hadn’t protested Dave Walker’s disqualification. There must have been a reason to run for student council vice-president. M’s votes went to Gregg Dixon, AP math classmate and yearbook editor. Maybe that’s the wrong story.
8/80
30
880 Words
natural. Now become/the person in your life. Start writing autobiography.” (B. Watten)
I
didn’t burn up the high school track. Cross-country still less of a glory sport. Two miles, like my walk to school. Not bad for my generation. That, and a morning paper route, built stamina. The letter contained no fess point pictogram, no winged shoe like track, only an alphabetic device, “CC.” The literate understood. I wore the sweater each Friday, just like the other jocks. I gave it to my girlfriend. A dozen years later I got it back again, her name sewn in, two moth holes in back. I wear it now, around the yard, among friends who think it’s from a garage sale. It doesn’t signify “City College.” I don’t go to garage sales. I haven’t run, really, in twenty years. The half mile in spring, two laps, catching the pack in the last back stretch, coming close. I think of jogging, marathon running. The late kick worked better in cross-country, where I had hills to help me. A disguise for laziness? No winged shoe sweater because summer came too fast. Fall
Jo
at the ends of his last laps, her shoulder fitting his armpit as he walked to catch his breath. Her house was a two block walk up a winding street. They never went all the way; they came close. “Together” for three years, two in colleges two thousand, then thirty, miles apart. Telephones and commuter busses, last goodbye in San Francisco where he had hills to help him. The beginning more exciting. They walked off the front porch through backyard trees behind her birthday party to his first “real” kissing. Seventeen in a midwest suburb, good kids into their senior year. She spent six weeks in club foot casts, an operation for high heels. She knitted him a sweater, blue, then. I supply what he can’t remember. The shape of her small breasts, the puff of down dark hair. She had twin sisters, a doctor-father, a dachshund, a cat with a crumpled ear, an ivy-covered house, freckles. “Twin shirts,” a green paisley design, button-down collars. He wore most collars half up behind, he was
between start and finish you are not the
two years later M wrote
the stillness behind the line straining to cross leaning leaning left right left forward faces at the first white flag across the the gun the pack pushing sideways spreading up and the clomp clomp clomp across old asphalt so many god they’re all up there lean left right left right inhale exhale get in rhythm! passing one two and tightness in the crotch long stride feeling so free the path and the grass the acorns bruising feet through thin-soled shoes sky and the edge of the hill and the long descent down in the mountains there you feel free don’t fight let go falling to stay erect one two three four five six seven second road round tree leaning forward on the ascent fire in the the burning the bridge the crowd flows so many a never ending rout of soles in pain my nose splitting the hill won’t stop no along with the path and the cliff and the trees and the pain and the
in “creative writing” class
16 Sentences
(or perpendicular) right-to-right and left-to-left, the angles are equal.” The West Side was another country. Our best sports were tennis and golf, which I didn’t play. Many of us were National Merit finalists. Paul Newman graduated from Shaker the year I was born. We built a rocket for a science fair, but it didn’t go off. I remember the square slow music of dancing class in country club ballrooms after dark. Delivering newspapers at six in the morning, six below. Eichmann, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Castro, Vostok I. We went to “Canteen” on Friday nights, dances Saturdays, parties, movies, football games. “I Remember Mama.” They called us “Shaker Heights Institute of Technology” on the starting line. Buddy Holly, Sam Cooke, and the Big Bopper, dead. “Don’t drink milk the day of a meet, and don’t eat spinach at all.” I lost the captaincy of the chess team in a summer match with a weaker player. Some smoked cigarets, drank 3.2 beer, marijuana, lsd, several years away. “If the sides of two angles are parallel
the (M/e)n
M wears his watch on the inside of his wrist after Jeff Lincoln, twenty years ago. A “natural runner,” Jeff won without workouts . After an arrest for buying 3.2 beer with an altered driver’s license and an accident that pierced both his lungs, he lettered at a prep school, and shone among them. M hung out in those days with the track team, and some others, second class. One Halloween M. Jeff, and John Battle put cigaret fuses on firecrackers outside Miss Pettingale’s dancing class. Saw how they ran. John’s feet were so small he mail-ordered track shoes. Rick Paul didn’t run, but they played chess while they walked to school. Sometimes M called himself “George Arter” because George, who didn’t run, took his girl. Years later Chuck Spear added chord changes. M lost an election and was sorry he hadn’t protested Dave Walker’s disqualification. There must have been a reason to run for student council vice-president. M’s votes went to Gregg Dixon, AP math classmate and yearbook editor. Maybe that’s the wrong story.
8/80
30
