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    Quiet Money
    Quiet Money
    Quiet Money
    Ebook84 pages43 minutes

    Quiet Money

    By Robert McDowell

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The poet’s first full-length collection, Quiet Money's New Edition consists almost exclusively of longer narrative poems, including the title poem about a bootlegger/pilot who flew the Atlantic solo before Charles Lindbergh. This piece is often cited as one of the most important poems of the 1980s and the movement to revive storytelling in verse.

     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStory Line Press
    Release dateJul 16, 2019
    ISBN9781586547462
    Quiet Money
    Author

    Robert McDowell

    Robert McDowell's poems, stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of magazines and anthologies here and abroad, including Best American Poetry, Poetry, The New Criterion, Sewanee Review, and The Hudson Review. He has taught at Bennington College, the University of Southern Indiana, and UC Santa Cruz; and at the Taos Writers' Conference, among many writers' conferences; and he was founding publisher/editor of Story Line Press. In addition, he coaches businesses in improving spiritual awareness, communication, writing, and presentation skills. His Web site is www.robertmcdowell.net.

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      Book preview

      Quiet Money - Robert McDowell

      1

      The Disconnected Party

      I lean into my cell, planning a call

      To someone I have missed for twenty years.

      I look out at the threatening neighborhood

      And wonder how I ever grew up here.

      I watch three teens on bikes come up the street,

      Slow down, and slap my window while passing by.

      I turn in time to meet their bully smiles

      With a street-tough look I worked on hard in mirrors.

      Convincing, I guess, because they do not stop

      To pull me from my car. I focus on

      The call again and stop. What do I want?

      What can Hansen say to justify

      The breaking of our friendship years ago?

      He wandered off that night with a cordless phone,

      And though I called I never brought him back.

      You could say Angry was the way I felt.

      After all, I was up all night

      Dialing his number. I phoned Emergency,

      His wife . . . I even got the cops involved.

      The next day I was edgy at the job

      And told my boss to shove it when he choked

      On figures I had put before the Board.

      After the meeting, he told me—you can guess.

      He clasped his hands together on his desk

      (the knuckles white, and each hand looking as if

      it didn’t like the other) and said to me

      Clean out your desk. Your tenure here is up.

      He said a lot of other muscle things,

      But I was looking down, tuning out.

      I had my hand around a paperweight,

      The fifty-dollar kind from some boutique.

      Somewhere between incompetent and ass

      I pitched a wicked hard one at his belt.

      His eyes popped out like eyes do in cartoons;

      His red cheeks ripened to purple and he seemed

      To swallow every sentence he’d spat out.

      I yanked the blotter from his desk and laughed;

      I slapped his face with his appointment book,

      Then bounced his nameplate off a tapestry

      He’d paid top dollar for. I wasn’t through.

      He had a gilded letter opener

      He loved to fiddle with. I snatched it up

      And rearranged the pattern of his couch.

      Dragging him by his tie out on the floor,

      I sat on him and yelled Let’s Horseback Ride!

      I thwacked his bottom with his favorite knife.

      That’s when Security discovered us.

      One laid me out with something across my back;

      Another bounced a sucker punch off my chin.

      When I came to, they had me down, in cuffs,

      And soon they tossed me into a black-and-white.

      I did some time. I worked. I ate. I slept.

      When I got out I followed 80 east,

      Working a shopping list of stupid jobs.

      Now I guess I’m where I meant to be—

      Eight digits away from finishing that talk

      That got me sidetracked twenty years ago.

      The ringing stopped. Electrocution music

      Jolted him, and a familiar tune

      From old-time radio made him quiver.

      I know this, he was thinking, as the music

      Faded under echoing, urgent voices.

      And then he awoke: I Love a Mystery

      Was greeting him instead of his oldest friend.

      Jack and Doc fought He-bats on a ledge,

      The program’s signature gong was pounding, then

      A voice said Leave Your Message at the Beep.

      Was that his friend? A stranger with his name?

      Instead of stating simply who he was,

      He laughed low like The Shadow and hung up.

      I’ll greet him where he lives, he told himself.

      His former buddy lived in the same place,

      A ranch house in a safe suburban tract.

      The neighborhood was working. He checked the street

      From the side porch and jimmied back the door.

      Inside, he bumped his hip against a dryer

      And slid his fingers up the wall for light.

      He saw a paper spread across the table

      In the breakfast nook, and one dish

      Stained with egg looked up at him. He sat.

      Picking his way through news he thought of change.

      He muttered into the emptiness of House

      And thought of opening drawers, changing clothes,

      Leaving his dirty

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