He
insists on confessing “I’ve never gotten poems”
and
he’s both surprised and pleased
when
I tell him “Sometimes neither have I.”
I
assure him no matter what poem we come up with
it
will be better than anything I could do on the gridiron—
my
Gale Sayers moves alive only in memory.
I
suggest he be aggressive with the first line
and
he writes ‘I am the Quarterback.’ Good, and in short
order
we have a serviceable twenty line poem—
one
able to withstand the image I failed to resist,
the
guard and tackle opening a hole for the fullback
“You
could drive a mack truck through.”
We
print the poem out and he folds it in half, lifts
his
arms skyward, turning and saying “Touchdown!”
Tim
Suermondt is the author of two full-length collections: Trying to Help the
Elephant Man Dance (The Backwaters Press, 2007 ) and Just Beautiful (New York
Quarterly Books, 2010). He has published poems in Poetry, The Georgia Review,
Prairie Schooner, Bellevue Literary
Review, and elsewhere. After many years in Queens and Brooklyn, he has
moved to Cambridge with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.
