Poem-A-Day: As You Never Bothered to Return My Call by August Kleinzahler

October 1, 2013 As You Never Bothered to Return My Call by August Kleinzahler     What I had wanted was to be chaste,  sober and uncomfortable for a sprawling episode on a beach somewhere dirty, perennially out of fashion;  let the smell of cocoa butter drive deep memory wild as the sun went down, a parti-colored blur,  examined through a bottle of pop some kid gave up on only half-way through and left to go warm in the sand.  The train ride would be long and hot,  and you, you've had it with men.  Me . . .          I'm sickened by the pronoun. Tenderness seems as far away as Sioux City and besides, it would have cost too much.  But you should have called,  if only since a preposterous little episode like this is just the stuff to scare off extra friends,  like soaking their laps with corrosive fizz.  And us . . .                What an impertinence, us.  We could have played gin rummy and taken a stroll into town or along the boardwalk, maybe,                                        with dear old Godzilla,  the first one, the best one, the 1954 one,  reprising his role this one last time, raising himself up over the horizon at dusk,  and hurrying us to a place we never would have dreamt of              going.        Copyright © 2013 by August Kleinzahler. Used with permission of the author.   About This Poem "This is an old poem, circa 1980, written when I was a young man. It's very much a young man's poem, and an old song indeed. It was never quite where it needed to be and left me me uneasy as I reread it over time. So, really quite recently, I decided to haul it back into the shop and and have a look underneath the hood. I do this sort of thing. Forgive me..."    --August Kleinzahler Most Recent Book by Kleinzahler The Hotel Oneira: Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013)   Poem-A-Day Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-A-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on  weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day Archive.   August Kleinzahler is the author of ten books of poetry including his most recent collection, The Hotel Oneira: Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), published today. He has taught writing at Brown University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop.   Upcoming Event  Poet August Kleinzahler and photographer Alec Soth will be in conversation at the Nourse Theater in San Francisco, CA on Monday, November 4th at 7:30 PM. This event is presented by City Arts & Lectures and co-sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. For additional information and to purchase tickets, please visit http://www.cityarts.net/e vent/august-kleinzahler-alec-soth/ or call 415.392.4400.  As an Academy of American Poets newsletter subscriber, you can receive $5 off tickets to this event by entering the Promo Code CITYARTSFAM when purchasing your tickets online.   Related Poems On Becoming a Poet in the 1950s by Stephen Beal The Hammock by Li-Young Lee The Cold War [excerpt] by Kathleen Ossip __________________________ Love reading Poem-A-Day? Help support it today.     Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.

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