» Kevin Boyle

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Kevin Boyle

Kevin Boyle grew up in Philadelphia and now lives in Burlington, North Carolina. His book of poems, A HOME FOR WAYWARD GIRLS, won the New Issues Poetry Prize in 2004, and his chapbook, THE LULLABY OF HISTORY, won the Mary Belle Campbell Poetry Book Publication Award in 2002. His poems have appeared in Greensboro Review, Virginia Quarterly, Michigan Quarterly, Poetry East, Denver Quarterly, North American Review, Colorado Review and Antioch Review.

Approaching Sixty

The plaza in sun-stroke, the men tied to palms

Whose branches they lop, he walks through

The dream to her steps and finds her still

In mourning, saying, come back in a year’s time,

My love, then invites him in, touching

His face to find out who he is, a recurring touch

For thirty years, and then gone, not the memory

Exactly, just the dream. A blessing not to wake

Without her, the black lace, the red in her hair

In her lips as well, the welcoming smile saying

Tengo las cosas muy claras, because everything

Makes sense to her now. And a blessing

Not to be turned away and find himself lost

In the two-block red light district where dwarves

And the deformed make small talk with

The sex buskers, the women raising their skirts

To show him their black mantillas they lift

To show him their hair, black and pomaded.

The two scenes arm in arm for years until

Finally he realizes he hasn’t dreamt of her,

Of all of them in years. Even in his dreams

He’s forgetting, leaving the exotic traces behind.

In the Deep Heart’s Core

Timmy was too kind to say no, despite the flooding

That winter, as always, the shite the road threw up

Even before it gave up on being a road, the students

Waking from their sleep to yawn and bitch about

The poor conditions of the mud lane, the brambles

And gorse scratching up and into the sides of

Timmy’s coach, even at the windows to frighten

The bejesus out of one slow, deeply hungover waker

As I took the mic to announce we were about to alight

For a view and snap of Yeats’s Inishfree, perhaps even

A class photo, with Inishfree in the distance, our heads

Surrounded by Lough Gill, our feet planted in muck

We’d bring back to Timmy’s coach, if Timmy

Would be so kind. We saw the island, “kind of puny,”

One student said, and another, “It’s a little fucking nothing,”

And then turned to arrange ourselves for Timmy

Who was still working the coach back and forth

To escape the trap that was the carpark, finally

Emerging in a lather, and though I thought to hand him

My camera for the group shot, all twenty-eight students

Handed him their cameras with quick directions,

And so with a few cameras on the ground, and the rest

Like bangles up and down his sweaty arms, he took

What felt like a thousand wedding photos, all of us

In fine mettle, the students and I smiling immeasurably,

As if at peace, the water birds flying away from us

Out of the rushes, the little bits of trash we dropped

Floating in the wind that put color in our cheeks, forced

The lake water to lap near our feet and take the one

Styrofoam cup someone had accidentally let slip

Out toward the mysteries of heather island.

I sometimes drag the photo out of my iPhoto folder

And realize I can’t remember a single student’s name

Because it was over a dozen years ago and Timmy,

I learned, is long dead, and though I seem to forget

Almost everything, I do remember his prescient words

As we left the lake. Never again, I’ll never again

Take you eejits down that fucking Yeats lane.

University Dreams

When I tell my daughter I only spent one Friday night

on campus when I was in college, she seems so saddened

by my loss I love her even more. At sixteen, she hates

school and is eager to go to college where she imagines

every Friday night will be filled with ecstasy, not the drug,

just the feeling, and Saturday night as well, perhaps Sunday.

She doesn’t mention Monday through Thursday much.

When I tell her I lived at home and took the bus and el

that left me off six blocks from my first class on Astronomy

taught by a man whose accent was from another galaxy,

she asks about Friday nights, Saturday, and I tell her everything

about the supermarket, how there were cash registers

to punch and no scanners, and they hadn’t invented the blood absorber

so all the meats bled as if freshly slaughtered, and how

once, during the five years, the Retail Clerks International

went out on strike, which meant I could be on campus

on a Friday night, even Saturday morning, before I had to return

to picket. And did you make up for lost time, she asked?

It was so long ago I can’t remember everything, except

that feeling of being alone and walking alone along fraternity row,

all the parties in full bloom, each house surrounded by a moat

of people, smoking and drinking, and then meeting, somehow,

a girl from Astronomy coming back from the library, Jewish,

both parents doctors, from Westchester. I told her my mother

was from the Bronx and, somehow, she invited me in

for a drink, and then—such a dark horse—to stay the night.

At that time I believed in half-hearted class war, and so felt

oppositional, and I was terrified of her, her openness,

her license, her black hair. And by Tuesday we had won

concessions, the strike was over, and I was back standing up

in my apron, blood here and there, kind of comforted

by the inhibitions, the tamping down, knowing that soon

would come the ecstasy, and I wasn’t far from wrong.

Why Sleepless

My mother told me not to fall asleep without

saying a decade of the rosary, and her mother

told her not to sleep with flowers in the room,

and a Russian caregiver told my parents to sleep with

the window open an inch or so in winter, and my brother

told me to sleep on my side of the bed or else

the wrath of Cain would come down upon me,

and my dog sleeps in a locked crate, and my mother-in-law

mentions the heat, how she can not sleep with

too much or too little heat since her husband died,

and my wife, when she sleeps, talks in her sleep

about the men who are pursuing her with knives

or with flowers, she’s never sure which, or she’s lost

her leather purse and men she has slept with

find it, dump everything in the grass, and fling

the purse deep within the long woods she can’t even see

for all the brush fires held against her eyes.

Seems to Teach

It is only during the eclipse that the moon takes

A lover, finding some other floating stone to hold

Close to her, some with dimples, some with the pox,

And as the world below her watches the magician’s cape

Cloud her over, the moon is at her antics, making love

Without arms or legs, all brain becoming quickly

All womb or all heart, she tells them. They’re at it

For an hour or so, having to part only as the sun begins

To light up their edges, the moon waxing poetic

About her moodiness and need again for privacy, solitude.

The rock begins its drift and the moon remains inviolate,

The virgin goddess beloved by all the lonely on the faces

Of the earth. She knows she is watched, and in the way

Parents teach children how to die, when the time comes,

She seems to teach the single, the solitary how to endure

With panache, with subtle shifts, the bright white loneliness.

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