“The Debate”
by Alison Luterman
I’m listening to my father and his brother,
both in their eighties, debate their childhood
from adjoining La-Z-Boy recliners.
“We had no toys,” my father insists.
“What are you talking about, no toys?”
My uncle practically leaps from his chair,
except he can’t, on account of his back and his legs
and his feet and his hips. “We had tons of toys!”
Then he lists them: the playing cards
(“Those don’t count,” my father says);
the train set (“Oh, yeah, I forgot about the train set”);
the sleds — “Did anyone else on our block have sleds?”
Uncle Barry asks. “Nineteen-forty, people are crawling
out of the Great Depression on hands and knees, tell me:
Did anyone on our block besides us have a sled?”
My father’s father had a good job delivering newspapers
and brought home sixty-five dollars a week,
enough for Chinese food every Friday
and cupcakes on birthdays.
“We really didn’t have birthday parties,”
my father contends, and my uncle lunges at this.
“What are you talking about?
What about that surprise party
when you turned thirteen?”
“That was the only time,” my father counters.
Don’t even try, Uncle Barry, I almost say,
then catch myself. I want
this unwinnable argument to continue —
forever, if possible. I want
the Brooklyn music of their voices
entwined in a duet with no resolution. I want the song —
half lament, half celebration —
to go on and on and on.
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“The Debate”
by Alison Luterman
I’m listening to my father and his brother,
both in their eighties, debate their childhood
from adjoining La-Z-Boy recliners.
“We had no toys,” my father insists.
“What are you talking about, no toys?”
My uncle practically leaps from his chair,
except he can’t, on account of his back and his legs
and his feet and his hips. “We had tons of toys!”
Then he lists them: the playing cards
(“Those don’t count,” my father says);
the train set (“Oh, yeah, I forgot about the train set”);
the sleds — “Did anyone else on our block have sleds?”
Uncle Barry asks. “Nineteen-forty, people are crawling
out of the Great Depression on hands and knees, tell me:
Did anyone on our block besides us have a sled?”
My father’s father had a good job delivering newspapers
and brought home sixty-five dollars a week,
enough for Chinese food every Friday
and cupcakes on birthdays.
“We really didn’t have birthday parties,”
my father contends, and my uncle lunges at this.
“What are you talking about?
What about that surprise party
when you turned thirteen?”
“That was the only time,” my father counters.
Don’t even try, Uncle Barry, I almost say,
then catch myself. I want
this unwinnable argument to continue —
forever, if possible. I want
the Brooklyn music of their voices
entwined in a duet with no resolution. I want the song —
half lament, half celebration —
to go on and on and on.
Special Problems in Vocabulary
By Tony Hoagland
There is no single particular noun
for the way a friendship,
stretched over time, grows thin,
then one day snaps with a popping sound.
No verb for accidentally
breaking a thing
while trying to get it open
—a marriage, for example.
No particular phrase for
losing a book
in the middle of reading it,
and therefore never learning the end.
There is no expression, in English, at least,
for avoiding the sight
of your own body in the mirror,
for disliking the touch
of the afternoon sun,
for walking into the flatlands and dust
that stretch out before you
after your adventures are done.
No adjective for gradually speaking less and less,
because you have stopped being able
to say the one thing that would
break your life loose from its grip.
Certainly no name that one can imagine
for the aspen tree outside the kitchen window,
in spade-shaped leaves
spinning on their stems,
working themselves into
a pale-green, vegetable blur.
No word for waking up one morning
and looking around,
because the mysterious spirit
that drives all things
seems to have returned,
and is on your side again.
Quite Excellent
“The Debate”
by Alison Luterman
I’m listening to my father and his brother,
both in their eighties, debate their childhood
from adjoining La-Z-Boy recliners.
“We had no toys,” my father insists.
“What are you talking about, no toys?”
My uncle practically leaps from his chair,
except he can’t, on account of his back and his legs
and his feet and his hips. “We had tons of toys!”
Then he lists them: the playing cards
(“Those don’t count,” my father says);
the train set (“Oh, yeah, I forgot about the train set”);
the sleds — “Did anyone else on our block have sleds?”
Uncle Barry asks. “Nineteen-forty, people are crawling
out of the Great Depression on hands and knees, tell me:
Did anyone on our block besides us have a sled?”
My father’s father had a good job delivering newspapers
and brought home sixty-five dollars a week,
enough for Chinese food every Friday
and cupcakes on birthdays.
“We really didn’t have birthday parties,”
my father contends, and my uncle lunges at this.
“What are you talking about?
What about that surprise party
when you turned thirteen?”
“That was the only time,” my father counters.
Don’t even try, Uncle Barry, I almost say,
then catch myself. I want
this unwinnable argument to continue —
forever, if possible. I want
the Brooklyn music of their voices
entwined in a duet with no resolution. I want the song —
half lament, half celebration —
to go on and on and on.
