Wednesday 12 July 2023

Three Poems by John Yamrus

 






Leda was a dancer



i think

it was 1969

and we were sitting on

the floor in the front room of her house,



playing

records on the stereo.



i remember

playing Steppenwolf

and Simon and Garfunkle.



i remember

she had her shoes off

and was showing me her feet,



how they

were all messed up

(even at such a young age)



from

so many years

of standing en pointe

and she said she wasn’t any good



and would

never really get

anywhere at it because

she was too short, but she loved dancing



and nobody

was gonna see her feet, anyway.



at eighteen,

i thought i was a poet,

but i never read Herman Hesse



and only

knew Steppenwolf as

a rock band and it didn’t really matter,





because

there was Leda

who was right about being

too short to be great ballerina,



but

she was

young and beautiful



and had a

flower behind her right ear



and

she smelled like

just cut roses and fresh grass.



she had

real short red hair

and hung around with a

crowd who spent summers at the lake



and liked

to talk about their

new cars and all the money they had.



i don’t know

why she went after me in the first place,



but, she did.



maybe she

thought i was different...



which i was,



because i was

young and dumb and awkward



and when i

walked across a room, i could

feel my brain balanced on the top of my head



and it was a

challenge just getting from here to there,



but

i thought

i was different

and thought i was a poet

and maybe that’s what Leda saw.



because

Leda was a dancer and

deep down inside of her she

didn’t like the lake and she really

didn’t like talking about cars or money.



i only

knew her for

that one summer,



and

our “romance”

(such as it was) only

lasted a couple of weeks,



because

the play ended.



i

didn’t

tell you we were

in a play together, did i?



it was

a lousy play and

i was a lousy actor and



it only

lasted a weekend



and

she sent me a

telegram on the opening night,



which

i thought

was the coolest

thing anyone ever did.



yeah,

Leda was a dancer



and

i was a poet



and

i finally did

get to read Steppenwolf.



i thought the band was a whole lot better.





did you ever



hear

of Son House?



who?



Son House...

he played the blues, man!



the

blues?

what sort of

weak-ass shit is that?



Son House

played guitar

like he had ten hands



and

when he sang,

the walls would shake.



weak-ass.



maybe,

but, did you

ever hear of Son House?





it was



freshman year

at high school and the

first real party i’d been invited to.



it was

maybe 1966

in someone’s basement



and

all i remember

was the room was small and dark



and

some guy

picked up a guitar

and played “Wipeout”



and

the girls smiled

and the guys were jealous



and i

felt as odd,

uncomfortable and



out

of place

as i still do now.






John Yamrus - In a career spanning more than 50 years as a working writer, John Yamrus has published 35 books (29 volumes of poetry, 2 novels, 3 volumes of non-fiction and a children’s book). He has also had more than 3,000 poems published in magazines and anthologies around the world. A number of his books and poems are taught in college and university courses. He is widely considered to be a master of minimalism and the neo-noir in modern poetry. His latest books are TWENTY FOUR POEMS and SELECTED POEMS: THE DIRECTOR’S CUT. A second volume of his poetry was just released in Europe, translated by Fadil Bajraj..


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