By: Paul Dickey

Functions

She knew him too well for this time
to matter, but he stayed up anyway,
all night, to copy logarithm tables
and drink beer. “To see what she’d say.”
He wanted her to-experience– –
the importance of his studies,
instead of just always saying so.

“So what if I would’ve come back to bed?
It’s not like she wants to solve anything.”
Se she made him laugh when she told
her mother that they had gone out
to a show, although he knew then
what it meant. She wouldn’t even
give him credit for what he’d done.

“We always said that we wouldn’t
ever need to make excuses
for each other. She was wrong about me.
I never was much to keep promises
“When I was four, I promised
Mother I would never grow up.”

“It is strange how a good night’s rest
can really straighten a girl out.”
When she let him- talk through breakfast
without one interruption, he
realized that she was determined
to get by this whole day without
getting mad at him once.
Se he set his will to prove that she couldn’t.

When she picked up the tennis rackets,
it was hard fir him, but he informed, her
without delay. He had to study all day.
She could, go shopping alone.
That didn’t bother her much; she expected it.
Anyway, he couldn’t let her down.

“I told her how natural it all is,
even our mothers and fathers have known it; that
grooms and brides are foolish to expect
a ritual to change their lives.
Sometimes I think that she wishes
we were still that young. I guess
women hold on to that longer.”

“I’ll buy you a dress; I’ll help you choose It.”
By the time that they had found the right one,
he was too tired to really care.
It took just one more mention Of his studies
to make her take back her thanks.
He was right again; he had saved his power.
In a relationship one needs to know where he stands.

When they got home without a-word –
and this time, with only two slams,
she fell dramatically on the bed.
“In a couple of hours, I’ll wake you,
say I’m sorry and ask you to go to a show.
It’s the way that we’ve got things set. up.
This way, you have a new dress to wear,
and I’ll tell you that I love you.”

Why the Unknown Poet Can’t Write a Known Poem

I am only going over this one more time.
An unknown poet is a poet who is not known.
A poet is not known for writing a poem.
A poet is known only for writing a poem
in a place that is inhabited by known poets.
A poem is known only if it is known, though
Ta tum ta tum ta tum ta tum ta tum
you insert a black rose here or a moon in June.

Poets once became known but not anymore.
Poets that are known are poets that are known.
They skillfully insert a black rose here
or a moon in June. Ta tum ta tum ta tum ta tum.
Poets that are not known are unknown poets.
Unknown poets do not write known poems.
This is the last time I am going over this.
Is this clear? I am not taking any questions.

The Maiden of Gilead

    "Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no 
physician there? why then is not the                    
health of the daughter of my people             
recovered?"  
….   Jeremiah 8:22

My father was not called like Abraham;
he was the son of a familiar woman,
not God. The test of faith was his own desire.
My name is unknown to the readers of scripture,
but I too have walked freely in the Holy Lands,
out of my father’s house to meet him with dances.
I have recalled for myself his victories for Israel,

and my barrenness is my despair and my vengeance.
Yet who could deny that I am the only mother,
I who alone, among the daughters of Abraham,
could tell my sons that God’s battles are bloody,
that no man shall speak in time for the Gileadites?
I told my father that I understood what I did not.
I, unlike Isaac, knew all and was not to be saved

###

Paul Dickey now lives in Omaha, NE and he is old, but he wrote poetry once in the 1970’s and studied creative writing at Wichita State University. At that time, he published Kansas Quarterly, Mikrokomos, Nimrod, Karamu, and Quartet. Dickey has now published these poems with a book, I Forget I Live Alone.