Jersey - Katharyn Howd Machan

Close, but not too close.

She broke my heart across the bridge

but fuck you, how ya doin’.

A movie could be made about us

and I’d buy a ticket for the front row

and popcorn, a quart, extra butter.

Her in her small black velvet hair bows,

me with my tongue, my sweater.

I’ve heard of a poet somewhere upstate

whose son just moved to Crown Heights.

I should call him: he makes films.

I’d like to see her and me on YouTube:

maybe swimming where she likes to go,

salty blue waves against deep sand

where bright needles wash up, used.

Jersey

Katharyn Howd Machan

Katharyn Howd Machan, Professor of Writing at Ithaca College, holds degrees from the College of Saint Rose, the University of Iowa, and Northwestern University. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines; in anthologies/textbooks such as The Bedford Introduction to Literature, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2013, Early Ripening: American Women’s Poetry Now, Literature, Sound and Sense, Writing Poems, and in 32 collections, most recently H (Gribble Press, 2014) and Wild Grapes: Poems of Fox (Finishing Line Press, 2014). Former director of the Feminist Women’s Writing Workshops, Inc., in 2012 she edited Adrienne Rich: A Tribute Anthology (Split Oak Press).