Julie Benesh — Intermittence

Be qui­et and let the poem (unlike life) end on together—Mark Halliday

After mid­night at the Hy-Vee
on First Avenue, sum­mer ‘75,
my moth­er and I, dis­guised as shoppers,
peo­ple-watch the round man in the fur
coat and bells on his boots pil­fer sardines
as stock­boys and check­out girls doze or
fan­ta­size at their posts or smoke in the alleyway.

I was 15;
she was 48,
and, together,
most everything
was magic.

Now I’m old­er than she will ever
be, a trite and sen­ti­men­tal observation,
you might say, and while I hear
you, I have to ask: are you some kind
of frost-bit­ten empiricist?

Or, con­verse­ly, a hov­er­ing pro­gres­sive, more con­cerned with the fate
of the stig­ma­tized klep­to­ma­ni­ac or mar­gin­al­ized laborers
than the priv­i­leged, pathet­ic speak­er of this poem
and her triv­ial­ly trag­ic protagonist?

So long as that serves you, I say
let’s agree to dis­agree, but, also,
let us end, for a change, this poem,

at least, with that place   in my chest
when I walk                   with my love
through a super­mar­ket    night or day
the crack­le of flu­o­res­cence brightens

~

Julie Benesh is recip­i­ent of an Illinois Arts Council Grant and a grad­u­ate of Warren Wilson College’s Program for Writers. Her writ­ing can be found in Bestial Noise: A Tin House Fiction Reader, Tin House Magazine (print), Crab Orchard Review, Florida Review, Gulf Stream, JMWW and many oth­er places. Read more at juliebenesh.com.