Love story #29
written by: Joseph Amendolare
I have a lot of things to do and I don’t feel like doing them; for example, the insurance company sent me a check for $310.63; it should be deposited, but it just looks back at me from the dining table where I laid it; two weeks ago last Monday; the girl was so helpful; I call her a girl, but more likely a woman; (was she married?); my mind wonders and I snap it shut; by this time there were additional checks; one from my 401K which I finally closed; and the state tax office sent a refund because I overpaid on my return; money is piling up, but it’s not money (yet) it’s just paper checks and ripped-open envelopes in need of discard. The pages are yellowing, on my Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry (purchased 1991 and never fully read); the beauty is that it is not meant to be read, like you would read an ordinary book; page after page; you simply sample the poems and the poets and you learn the beauty of what they are, or were, someone; thinking; on a particular day, a particular moment, somewhere, in America; many of them are now dead; it’s okay; you can still read them, you can still hear them; you may have even been alive, somewhere, when the words were written; I know that I was, am, at one time, someplace; a summer day that I waited to board the Monorail with Uncle Jack at the New York World’s Fair; in 1964 or maybe it was 1965; See? I was alive on a day that marvelous poetry was being written (although I cannot tell you the exact date, or day of the week; suffice it to say: I was alive). Saved for me, like a frozen pizza, so that I might unbox it and read it now; the phone is ringing so I answer it’s the girl from State Farm (her name is Jamie) and although we’ve never met in person her phone voice is so beautiful it makes me realize that she must be almost as beautiful yet she is only asking me quite simply why I haven’t cashed my check yet.
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