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By Root 980 0

big corporate giants and we were the struggling artists. We needed to write and draw and staple and sip Sanka with fake cream powder in it. At one point Reagan actually stole a rolling steel chair with some great swivel action in its legs. The rest of us decided that might be pushing the envelope a bit-although we had already pushed the envelope literally and figuratively by stealing thousands of envelopes over the course of our first month on the job.

One night during week five, Adam and I were in the editor in chief's office when he noticed something on top of the big guy's desk-a neat pile of typed pages.

Lookit this, he said.

What? I replied as I speed-polished a bookcase.

It's a bunch a poems.

What kinda poems? I said, waxing a coffee table by wrapping two towels around my forearms, spraying a shitload of Lemon Pledge on the table and flailing back and forth like a wounded trout in an Igloo cooler.

John Ashbery, he said.

(Now let me take a second to explain who John Ashbery was and is-an incredibly celebrated American poet who has won every available award, including the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize and, well-name one more important award and he probably has two of them. His work is dense with intellect and verbal dexterity. He will go down as one of the greatest poets in the history of the written word.)

He sucks, Adam said.

Yeah-I know, I agreed.

This must be some stuff this editor guy's thinking of puttin' in the magazine.

Yeah, I mumbled.

So.

So what?

We should get rid of this shit and put some of your stuff here instead, Adam said without even a hint of doubt.

Whaddaya nuts?

Listen ta me-this guy comes in tomorrow'n reads yer stuff-yer stuff is revolutionary, man-this editor guy's gonna read it and he's gonna flip out'n he's gonna publish it'n yer gonna be famous'n we're gonna be bangin' chicks from Harvard'n shit.

(Now, as dumb as that plan sounds please remember-we were both nineteen years old. We WERE dumb. Young, dumb and full of come. And bad poetry. I had been writing it for only about a year and a half and at the time, of course, I thought it was Groundbreaking and Important and Needed To Be Heard. Needless to say-I took the bait.)

You know two or three of your poems by heart? Adam asked.

(Of course I did. I couldn't remember the Our Father or The Latin Mass or any part of The Declaration of Independence or The Gettysburg Address beyond their titles, we the people and four score and seven years ago-but my own poems and Rolling Stone lyrics and the starting lineup of every Boston Bruin or Boston Red Sox team since I was about five years old? Those were all on the tip of my tongue.)

Let's go, I said assertively.

So Adam and I tore up John Ashbery's poems and tossed them into the trash and sat down at the desk of the editor's secretary and typed up two of my poems. This is what they were:

ONOMATOPOEM

Bang.

Bang bang.

Bang bang bang bang.

Boom.

Crack.

Bam.

Boom.

Shicka shicka shicka.

Poof.

FUCK

This.

Them.

That.

Us.

Is.

As.

Was.

Will.

Be.

And.

You.

We decided not to put my name on them-just to make the whole process an even bigger mystery. Then we tenderly stapled them together and placed them gingerly in the center of the editor's desk. Stared down at them for a long, long beat-imagining the great fortune they were about to bring our way. We literally shook hands and smiled at each other. Then, as a fitting gesture of trust and solidarity-we left the stapler behind.

Returning to our tornado sweep cleaning, we finished by ten-fifteen, hit the bars at ten-thirty and chased tail and planned plans and laughed and smoked and dreamed and laughed and went to bed and got up to rehearse with The Workshop and eagerly returned to work the following afternoon at five p.m.

It was almost five past five when the editor in chief of The Atlantic Monthly pulled me aside as I was once again donning my bowling slash janitor shirt down in the working-class bowels of the building. He said Adam had pointed me out as the source of the poems left atop his desk. He then