Mr. Myra Albert Wiggins Recalls Their Arrangement

 by Susan Rich

Maybe it was the bicycle. The way her hips

rose up and up - as if directed straight to heaven - 

Like a Venus. And a banker's daughter - true.

Real original, this girl - a bicycle, a camera,

other newfangled tools. I sent her bolts

of cloth, overalls, and boots - anything to make her squint

her eyes and glance one day towards me - me: Fred

Wiggins of Wiggins bazaar - 123 Commercial Street.

More of a back-up boyfriend, for someone like Myra

her family would say. Everyone knew she was in love

with her own life: bareback rides, opera singing,

and the New York artiste nights. But I expected 

to live a little, too. And so if there were men

of Salem, Toppenish, Seattle, lovely and rich - 

who snickered at our last-season suits

and sequined gowns, who hinted not infrequently - 

that a husband should not be so happy

packing picture frames and mounting

photographs. Christ. They knew nothing.

from Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems

Rochester, New York, July 1989

 by Marie Howe

Early summer evenings, the city kids would ride their bikes down his

   street

no-handed, leaning back in their seats, and bump over the curb

of the empty Red Cross parking lot next door where Joe's car was 

   parked, and

John's white Honda, broken and unregistered...everything blooming,

that darkening in the trees before the sky goes dark: the sweetness of the 

   lilacs

and the grass smell...

And the sound on the front porch steps was wooden and hollow,

and up the narrow stairway stuffy, and dim, and the upper door maybe a little

open - and into the hall and left into his room: someone might be sitting

   there

reading, or sometimes only him, sleeping,

or lying awake, his face turned toward the door,

and he would raise his hand...

And the woman who lived below there played the piano. She was a 

   teacher, and

sometimes we'd hear that stumbling repetition people make when they're

learning a new song, and sometimes she'd play alone - she'd left a note

in his mailbox saying she would play softly for him. And those evenings,

when the sky was sunless but not yet dark, and the birdsong grew loud

   in the trees,

just after supper, when the kids wheeled by silently

or quietly talking from their bikes, when the daylilies closed up

alongside the house,

music would sometimes drift up through the floorboards,

and he might doze or wake a little or sleep,

and whoever was with him might lean back in the chair beside the bed

and not know it was Chopin,

but something soft and pretty -maybe not even hear it,

not really, until it stopped

 - the way you know a scent from a flowering tree once you've passed it.

From the book What the Living Do

Old Habits

 by Joy Sullivan

I wiped out on my bike yesterday. My ex was with me and helped me up and it was romantic for a moment in the way romcoms are romantic when the love interest leaps to the rescue in the wounded aftermath and gently dabs their lover's lip and fixes them up with bandaids and kisses: oh, this might sting a little. Except that this is real life and he spills the hydrogen peroxide all over the couch as he tries to bathe my bloody elbow and my torn up knee and I'm crying but not in a sexy way and we're not lovers anymore but still there's love. Not the fireworks kind, but the familiar and sweaty and honest type that carries you home and slaps a bag of frozen broccoli on your bruised thigh and accidentally calls you baby again - as if you might not notice. As if your heart doesn't thump like the tail of an old hound at the sound of her name.

Earth Appoints a Child to Make the Case

 by Kim Stafford

You guys are all dressed up! Is this your

dinner table? It's really big. Okay, so--

I was down in the woods near my house

minding my own business, but this voice

out of nowhere starts talking, talking to me,

starts teaching me this big word: "non-neg...

non-negosh...negosh...non-negotiable."

That's it. This change that's coming is 

non-negotiable. That's the whole thing

I'm supposed to tell you guys. The voice

said you don't seem to know that. Then it

went away, and I stood there in the trees.

So that's it, okay? The big change is just 

non-negotiable. Now can I get on my bike

and go home? My mom will kill me if I'm late.

from As the Sky Begins to Change