John Louis slipped me cash
every month, enough to pay
some bills and start a separate
bank account. You tight?
he’d ask, bumping a stack
of brand-new twenties
across his pickup’s leather seat,
school picture of his daughter
taped to the dash,
birthmark on her chin
a map of Chicago.
He drove me home all winter.
He knew my husband
locked the car and hid the keys.
We worked at the college.
We walked the halls on break.
His arm crooked
across the snack machine,
he’d insert a five, leave me
the change. I took it every time.
We were a team; he taped
concerts, I duplicated them.
My days looped in a windowless
room, living the same sweet
advice one hundred times.
The day I left town,
he drove me to the warehouse,
asked for a dance.
Stacks of corrugated cardboard,
tangled cords, a little static radio
playing someone else’s dream.
Pecans, John said, Louisiana buckets full.
Acres of nut-tree shade. Let’s go.
My burgundy shoes circled
counter-clockwise on the cracked cement,
arms around his neck. I didn’t know
what I owed him. He was kind to me.
Sure, I said, Someday we’ll go.
Click here to read Jana-Lee Germaine on the origin of the poem.
Image by Ryan Porter on unsplash.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
Jana-Lee Germaine:
During my abusive first marriage I had a co-worker who became a friend – not the sort I talked to about anything deep, but someone who undertook to help me without my asking. I’m sure he suspected the abuse. He must’ve suspected I wasn’t permitted access to money, as well, because every day he’d buy me a snack and leave me the change. And once a month, he’d give me a few hundred dollars; it was enough to pay my student loan and put a little into a secret bank account. I felt odd about taking the money, but I didn’t want to default on my student loans, and my husband had us so in debt we were constantly in danger of our electricity and other utilities being shut off. There was an undercurrent to our friendship I couldn’t quite process at the time. He had a wife and kids. I felt like I was getting myself in debt to him in a variety of ways, and I didn’t know what he expected back. Everything was ambiguous. And the abuse left me devastated on a deep level; I couldn’t emotionally process what was going on.
In approaching this poem, I asked myself how to write about a relationship so confusing and disorienting yet vital during that time. One that I still don’t fully understand. I found my answer in the short lines and pretty straightforward narrative structure of the poem, in simple surface images and word choices that let the undercurrents in our relationship be undercurrents in the poem. Couplets were the right form for the poem because of the variety of couples in the circumstances – we were both married, we were a team, his help tethered me to him, and there was a creditor/debtor element to our relationship.
Jana-Lee Germaine is Senior Poetry Reader for Ploughshares and Social Media Manager for Presence. Publications include Nelle, Water-Stone Review, Poet Lore, Iron Horse Literary Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, MER & elsewhere. She earned an MFA from Emerson College and is on the Board of Trustees for her public library. www.janaleegermaine.com
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Always amazed and impressed by your authenticity and ability to craft deeply personal poetry. Proud of you!