by Marianne Chan
We wanted our own place. So, we lived on Walnut Street and
took theater classes at the community college. Sam was a good
actor, could bring life to Shakespeare, make his meanings clear.
We drank walnut wine on Walnut Street
and invited people over. The house was owned by Homer,
but this is no epic. This is a flat, non narrative, Midwestern
conversation, the likes of which we had every day that year, the
long winding talks a person could enter with little effort, a path in
a field
with no hill or knotty roots. But I could make this an epic. I
could build into it a journey plot, if necessary. It was 2007. We
were nineteen and twenty, and we ruined Homer’s house with our
boredom.
Homer never came by to pick up rent. Why was that? He was
seventy and did push-ups on our back porch. He’d renovated the
house before we moved in. He’d done all that work. And we drank
too much and flushed tampons
down the toilet, our friends vomiting on the kitchen tile. By
2008, the walls in the Walnut house were stained and crumbling
like rotting teeth. What is the opposite of an epic? A lyric? Lyric
poetry is not the opposite, but just another type, another option.
Some would say we could’ve chosen another type of coming-
of-age story. We didn’t need the underage lotus-eaters drinking
wine on our porch, breaking the staircase banister. Didn’t need the
afternoons spent nursing the headache, bike stolen, the smell
of smoke and Michigan leaves, the color of cheddar cheese,
plummeting down our driveway. Perhaps Sam and I could’ve
moved to Chicago. We could’ve auditioned for plays at the
Steppenwolf. Sam was truly a good actor, could cry
on command. But perhaps it could’ve been worse on Walnut
Street. We could’ve died from raw chicken on the counter,
someone could’ve broken a hip from all the dancing, someone
could’ve drunk from the wrong cup, and yet, we made it out alive.
- Share this Poem:
