Jane Goodall and Bruce Springsteen Contemplate their Childlessness by John Dudek
Associate poetry editor Kenley Alligood on today’s bonus poem: In some ways, these characters are polar opposites, people whom it is difficult to imagine occupying the same space, and yet John Dudek has placed them here, comfortably, together. This poem radiates a soft and charming domesticity, an easiness that exists between two people who know each other well. And, underneath it all, echoing like the opening chords of a rock song, the indescribable ache for something more.
Jane Goodall and Bruce Springsteen Contemplate their Childlessness
Halloween: The Boss trims the coiled ends
of his guitar strings with greasy wire cutters
and the solemnity of a monk at his catechism. Doctor Goodall
slings the chimp around her neck, a rescue
from a terrier’s interrogations. She considers the tool,
the dishes, and the excess of her own elegance, that trim product
of pragmatism peering from the microwave’s reflection.
Clipped and tuned, the guitar bellows a few cowboy chords
and retreats to its case. The Boss adjusts the toothpick
wedged in his underbite, rolls his shoulders and asks the Doctor
if she is ready for the big party. They must stop for cigarettes,
she says. She quit months ago but wants to know if
the Boss knows that Catwoman is coming out. The Doctor needs
the fortification. The Boss has a way of looking, a far-away
dreaminess that drags his eye along the curve
closest resembling the New Jersey Turnpike.
The Doctor foresees the tar-black spandex on the Cat’s hip.
The Boss does a pull up in the door frame. He wonders
if the Doctor’s heart is more akin to an echo in the quarry
or the engine rattle in a fireroad champ’s souped-up Chevrolet.
The Doctor asks again, pulling a thread
from the cut-off hem of the Boss’s western shirt.
Her eyes are as warm and vigilant as his mother’s porchlight.
She is a student of social hierarchies, of territory—
a doctor, she reminds him. He asserts that he is not her father.
Though, they can agree that all beasts are prey to some needs.
John Dudek is a graduate of the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His work has appeared in The
Journal, Grist, Carolina Quarterly, The Midwest Review, and elsewhere.
