by Denise Duhamel
We’re walking on the boardwalk
but stop when we see a lifeguard and his girlfriend
fighting. We can’t hear what they’re saying,
but it is as good as a movie. We sit on a bench to find out
how it will end. I can tell by her body language
he’s done something really bad. She stands at the bottom
of the ramp that leads to his hut. He tries to walk halfway down
to meet her, but she keeps signaling don’t come closer.
My husband says, ‘Boy, he’s sure in for it,’
and I say, ‘He deserves whatever’s coming to him.’
My husband thinks the lifeguard’s cheated, but I think
she’s sick of him only working part time
or maybe he forgot to put the rent in the mail.
The lifeguard tries to reach out
and she holds her hand like Diana Ross
when she performed ‘Stop in the Name of Love.’
The red flag that slaps against his station means strong currents.
‘She has to just get it out of her system,’
my husband laughs, but I’m not laughing.
I start to coach the girl to leave her no-good lifeguard,
but my husband predicts she’ll never leave.
I’m angry at him for seeing glee in their situation
and say, ‘That’s your problem – you think every fight
is funny. You never take her seriously,’ and he says,
‘You never even give the guy a chance and you’re always nagging,
so how can he tell the real issues from the nitpicking?’
and I say, ‘She doesn’t nitpick!’ and he says, ‘Oh really?
Maybe he should start recording her tirades,’ and I say,
‘Maybe he should help out more,’ and he says,
‘Maybe she should be more supportive,’ and I say,
‘Do you mean supportive or do you mean support him?’
and my husband says that he’s doing the best he can,
that’s he’s a lifeguard for Christ’s sake, and I say
that her job is much harder, that she’s a waitress
who works nights carrying heavy trays and is hit on all the time
by creepy tourists and he just sits there most days napping
and listening to ‘Power 96’ and then ooh
he gets to be the big hero blowing his whistle
and running into the water to save beach bunnies who flatter him,
and my husband says it’s not as though she’s Miss Innocence
and what about the way she flirts, giving free refills
when her boss isn’t looking or cutting extra large pieces of pie
to get bigger tips, oh no she wouldn’t do that because she’s a saint
and he’s the devil, and I say, ‘I don’t know why you can’t just admit
he’s a jerk,’ and my husband says, ‘I don’t know why you can’t admit
she’s a killjoy,’ and then out of the blue the couple is making up.
The red flag flutters, then hangs limp.
She has her arms around his neck and is crying into his shoulder.
He whisks her up into his hut. We look around, but no one is watching us.
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Last updated August 24, 2025
About this Poem
It is not easy to write a funny poem, much less a funny poem that is intelligent about argument. Denise Duhamel’s ‘How It Will End’ works in such a way that its poetic skill and dexterity – not to mention its psychological insight – unfolds like a compelling and indicting drama. The stage is the boardwalk. The characters come in twos: the lifeguard and his girlfriend; the speaker and her husband. So far so straightforward; two straight couples – one in an argument, the other observing it. Though observers can only see, but not hear, still ‘it is as good as a movie’. What a simile. In a film, reality is suspended – people can fight, kill, shoot, change, die, rise from the dead, fly, and then moviegoers walk out afterwards discussing it on the level of entertainment. The characters are established easily: lifeguard and girlfriend work perfectly as archetypes, each a blank enough character that much can be attributed to them. The poet and her husband ‘sit on a bench’, watch without shame. As passive observers – they don’t seek to intervene – they wait to find out ‘How It Will End’, the plotline and title of the poem. The back and forth begins with playful and pleasurable projection: the poet and her partner are entertained, and mostly in agreement: ‘Boy, he’s sure in for it,’ and ‘He deserves whatever’s coming to him.’ Their only disagreement is over what the lifeguard’s sin is: has he cheated? Has he not paid rent? It is when the girlfriend signals to her boyfriend – ‘she holds her hand like Diana Ross’ – that the observing couple begin to split: the husband thinks it’s just a matter of the girlfriend needing to ‘get it out of her system’ but the poet begins to instruct.It is at this point that the poem turns, both in content, but also form. Up until now the sentence-lengths have been a line, or two, or a little more; sentences with fifteen, or sixteen, or up to twenty-three words. But when the speaker states ‘You never take her seriously’ a long, 255-word sentence emerges, escalating and rising and demanding and accusing and identifying and assuming, building and building in a fight that everybody knows has nothing to do with either the lifeguard or the girlfriend. There are limited gendered roles everywhere, and underneath all of those, there is pain. Along with this drama is an almost wilful misunderstanding, and if the drama between the lifeguard and girlfriend had not resolved, the plotline would have continued. But then, ‘out of the blue the couple is making up.’
What is this long sentence? It is impossible to state it without the pauses that – by Duhamel’s insertion of discrete sentence packages like ‘Maybe he should help out more’ – allow for breath. Even so, it changes the tempo. Energy builds. Is it erotic energy? Is the argumentative energy meant to echo sex? If so, is it good sex? Angry sex? Is someone taking pleasure from this reenactment of complicated coupledom? Is it helpful? Are either of them satisfied? Has fighting replaced sex for the speaker and her spouse? Where is this going?
The energy dissipates as suddenly as the argument: the red flag that’s hitherto been slapping ‘against his station . . . flutters, then hangs limp.’ If one hasn’t been projecting sex into the unfolding lines already, then ‘limp’ brings at least one organ to mind. The lifeguard and the girlfriend disappear into the hut. The first couple look around, almost as if for someone else to project onto, some other tableau to perform the thing they can’t bear about themselves. One of the delights of this poem – and its subtle tease to an audience – is the usage of observation. A couple – the speaker and her husband – observe an arguing couple. At some point in the reading, we begin to pay less attention to the arguing couple and more attention to what’s happening between speaker and spouse. It’s been building, until the turn after ‘“That’s your problem”’, when the back and forth of dialogue escalates. Part of Duhamel’s brilliant sleight of hand is that the reader is now involved. The drama ends with ‘but no one is watching us’ but that’s not entirely true: the reader is watching the couple watching the couple. With whom do we side? Whose point of view do we discard, or empathise with? Do we like either of them? What of the reader is drawn into their drama, what does our connection with – or rejection of – either of them say about our own assumptions?
The conflicts between both couples are funny, hyperbolic, exaggerated in their gendered roles, insightful and infuriating. In such escalation, the temptation is to view the other through a tropeish lens of identity or behaviour. Every couple has conflict, and the question as to whether we expect the couple in the poem to survive is closely linked to our own relationship to conflict. That’s the point. Who’s watching? The lifeguard and the girlfriend seem to have found repair. Dramatic task complete, they quickly exit the scene, leaving the observing couple – and us the readers – with questions about survivability, arguments, capacities or incapacities to listen. Is repair possible? Or necessary? Do we think fault is split between them, or rests solely on one or the other? They are each looking for something that the other doesn’t seem capable of giving. They know each other, they have routines – a boardwalk stroll for the purpose of people-watching: is this for enjoyment, or avoidance? How do we feel about what’s happening between this couple? What does that reveal about our own lives? The couples’ surface-level behaviour is just a caricature for my own more complex processing: they are acting like fools and also believably; they are each hurting each other while each is hurting; they are talking but not really. Other poetic techniques lie hidden in the poem. There’s repetition: the colours blue and red, that flag, and those three lines that each begin with ‘Maybe’. Later, there are three more that repeat ‘and . . . and . . . and’, and shortly afterwards, two lines end with ‘admit . . . admit’. What is the maybe, the and, the admit? Who is speaking to whom? What will happen with this couple? We do not know. The title – ‘How It Will End’ – with its conventional capitals, looms as an opportunity for the readers, and the dramas, dialectics and decisions of our own populated lives.