I mainly remember two things
about your
reading that summer 1970
at State
Teachers College in Conway:
1.
Standing
alone at the podium
of Snow
Auditorium’s vast stage
you lifted
folded paper
crumpled
like a soiled map
from your dark-grey
coat pocket
crackled it
open close to microphone
and mumbled,
“Here’s a poem I just finished:
Talking
to Dogs
In memorium Rolf Strobl
Run over June 9th, 1970
You read
with the distant drone
of a power
line stretched across prairie.
Months later
I would see your poem
printed on a
crisp white page of Harper’s Magazine.
2.
As you
stepped to us backstage
Lee Rogers
and I shuffled nervous soft shoe.
Neither of
us knowing what to say to a legend
Lee warbled,
“What brings you to Arkansas?”
Your face
with more
crevices and character
than an
Ozark mountain
encircled by
scarves of smoke
rising from
unfiltered cigarette stuffed
between two
fingertips the color of jaundice
seemed to
fade from us.
Your tired bloodhound
eyes
curdled by
old skin
studied our
shoes
as your
diaphragm-deep answer
crawled toward
us:
“My agent.”
Roger
Armbrust
1990s
