Bike Ride with Older Boys
by Laura Kasischke

The one I didn't go on.

I was thirteen,
and they were older.
I'd met them at the public pool. I must

have given them my number. I'm sure

I'd given them my number,
knowing the girl I was. . .

It was summer. My afternoons
were made of time and vinyl.
My mother worked,
but I had a bike. They wanted

to go for a ride.
Just me and them. I said
okay fine, I'd
meet them at the Stop-n-Go
at four o'clock.
And then I didn't show.

I have been given a little gift—
something sweet
and inexpensive, something
I never worked or asked or said
thank you for, most
days not aware
of what I have been given, or what I missed—

because it's that, too, isn't it?
I never saw those boys again.
I'm not as dumb
as they think I am

but neither am I wise. Perhaps

it is the best
afternoon of my life. Two
cute and older boys
pedaling beside me—respectful, awed. When we

turn down my street, the other girls see me ...

Everything as I imagined it would be.

Or, I am in a vacant field. When I
stand up again, there are bits of glass and gravel
ground into my knees.
I will never love myself again.
Who knew then
that someday I would be

thirty-seven, wiping
crumbs off the kitchen table with a sponge, remembering
them, thinking
of this—

those boys still waiting
outside the Stop-n-Go, smoking
cigarettes, growing older.

Gee, You’re So Beautiful That It’s Starting to Rain
by Richard Brautigan

Oh, Marcia,
I want your long blonde beauty
to be taught in high school,
so kids will learn that God
lives like music in the skin
and sounds like a sunshine harpsichord.
I want high school report cards
to look like this:

Playing with Gentle Glass Things
A

Computer Magic
A

Writing Letters to Those You Love
A

Finding out about Fish
A

Marcia’s Long Blonde Beauty
A+!

Richard Brautigan (1935 - 1984) published novels, stories and poetry. His first commercial success came with the publication of the novel Trout Fishing in America in 1967. Brautigan withdrew from a public life in 1972, living in Bolinas, California and rarely making appearances. In 1982, he taught at Montana State University and then went underground again. He committed suicide in 1984. His poetry collections include Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt, and  The Springhill Mine Disaster, and his novels include The Tokyo-Montana Express, The Abortion, Willard and his Bowling Trophies, In Watermelon Sugar and A Confederate General from Big Sur.

It's not uncommon for a poet to directly address someone in a poem. And readers often play the game of trying to figure out how "real - as in autobiographical - is the content of the poem. Is that really about his father? So, the wife in the poem is actually his wife?

I know teachers of poetry who deliberately remove the poet's name from a poem they hand out in order to try and shut down the baggage that comes with knowing who is the poet and attaching a life story.

On the other side of all this is that less common situation of reading a poem written by someone you know, and thinking that it is YOU that is the subject of the poem. That might be flattering - or insulting, embarrasssing or give you thoughts of a lawsuit.

I was reading poems from the Poetry 180 collection - "Bike Ride with Older Boys" by Laura Kasischke and "Gee, You’re So Beautiful That It’s Starting to Rain" by Richard Brautigan - and the song, "You're So Vain" by Carly Simon came on the radio.  That serendipitous pairing of the song with its refrain "You probably think this song is about you"  crossed over into my reading.

Try as I did, I could not find a poem that exactly fit the prompt I wanted: a poem about someone that tries to convince the reader and the subject of the poem that it is NOT about them. (Like Carly's song)

The two model poems are certainly about someone - Brautigan's Marcia for sure - but Kasischke's boys (I think of them as one) existed but she didn't go on the ride with them. Still, the poem is about them - but not about them.

Can you come up with the model poem that the prompt needed?

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