Even after J. B. left and went to a better house
I still sat there reading manuscripts.
Lindsay: A Romance of Old Virginia . . .
There’d be a long red hair
or else a soup or jam stain.
I envisioned her in a dressing gown
typing away. Then she’d pause
to eat jam out of the jar with a spoon.
Waycross, by a retired businessman…
When I said that we couldn’t publish it
a tear came to each eye and ran slowly down.
“You want to leave,” Mike said.
“Find another occupation.
There is a tide in the affairs of men
which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
omitted, all the voyage of their lives
is bound in shallows and in miseries.”
“Life,” I said.
“All the voyage of their life.”
His mouth was full of steak.
He stopped chewing. “Tell me,” he said,
“have you thought of being a professor?”
I left publishing and went into teaching.
Now I’m surrounded by professors.
They don’t believe in experience,
only theory . . . figures of speech.
I prefer the red-haired woman
with her jam jar and her spoon;
the woman with the mating machine;
the man who brings you a manuscript
in a box fastened with a chain.
Irving Berlin has been entering his apartment
for years and stealing his songs.
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