March 4th: Micah Gresl-Turner
The wet earth under the grass
exudes beauty. The food, sitting out,
softening on my plate exudes beauty because I have a whole hour
(and a half!) to eat it.
My professor exudes beauty, who found
his lost rare book upon arrival
to the dining hall this morning.
My classmate exudes beauty, we walked
with her today, who I have
spoken to twice and cancelled
plans for lunch with, by email too,
the day of. I was hungover
with guilt, vertigo, not her number.
Vomit exudes beauty. It teaches homilies,
intrinsic ones of fear and faith.
The assorted hats of my coworkers
exude beauty, who I pass by
on the way into dinner daily.
The malgrinning ache in my stomach
exudes beauty. My screaming pocket alarm,
sentinel of my appointment, exudes beauty.
Those students at every table exude
beauty, who I don't know, who
I don't love and don't hate
but have only come to recognize
slowly, and then all at once
seeing them on so many nights
from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.
which is really 3:57 to 8:57
or sometimes 8:35. They come up
to me with all the shyness
of a college kid, snaked around
in a skin-tarped queue, shrinking, murmuring,
first slowly and then all at once.
They have started to recognize me,
too. I have only two, only
half-free, free evenings now. Weekday weekend.
Atomized recursive sprinting of the mind
clouds me often. I absorb it
with thirteen dollars an hour (taxed)
and insignificant big crushes. I have
put too much life into banality.
Banality exudes beauty. There is magic
in the mopped tiled floor glowing
twice a day. The careless stains
on the round tables exude beauty.
Everyone in this building has lived
in some other building before. Sun
streaks in now to affirm midday.
My roommate slept as I left
our dorm this morning. I felt
a short envy of her rest
but after that, all love. She
exudes beauty. She is studying life.
She is growing two teal caterpillars
in her lab class, watching, writing,
vigilant of their emerging pupator hearts,
remarkably kind in all her accomplishments
and harboring an undeserved fear. So
she was asleep, wrapped in pink
duvet on her lofted college bed.
We sleep along the same wall,
and though my bed isn't lofted
too, we face each other easy
and talk for hours (when home).
Now, we see each other less;
boyfriend, friends, labs, and the library
for her, work/sleep for me,
give those long quiet stretches oxygen.
But now I am leaving lunch,
and she must be in class.
My English professor's warm silent room
should have candles. I sit sideways
in the office's strange third seat,
normally covered by a writing-folders box.
This is the second double appointment
my friend and I have dared
to reserve. Our professor dazed us
two Octobers ago with the secret
linguist code, "I", "You", beloveds, Herbert,
Whitman, and lots of subconscious God.
Then after months, we friends met.
Now, I sit in the strange
third seat while my company discuss
Joan Didion's tone and the politics
of my friend's father, history professor,
my friend's father who exudes beauty.
I have seen him only once.
I talk about poppies, and October,
again. I am shown Psalm 8.
The hour chokes fast in flash,
and then we are out stumbling
into the daylight of early May.
In my two-hour once-a-week 1 p.m.
seminar—which I hated for weeks
in February, because I felt hopeless;
I couldn't read anymore, all that—
we discuss body and object. Object
of a body—veins running under
the hands of men—human skeleton
setting itself standing against a wall—
sky half blue and almost warm—
the professor kindly let us out
early, because of the breathing weather—
not spring but close very undeniably
close. On Thursday it will snow.
(An hour happens, God knows where.)
At work—3:58—I think briefly
about the point of my job.
I am standing there nearly useless
for the first half-hour this shift.
Oil in the machine is necessary,
but vanity is easy to pronounce;
I want to be always moving
simply, never thinking. After that pause
I am busy and serve students
chicken and rice all the night.
There are many other student workers
too, who come and go often.
On Tuesdays I work with Clara
who wears long brown hair, talks
sometimes with the students in Portuguese,
and Oliver with the sport shoes
and a pendant round his neck
which I can't get a good
look at. Many others come, stay,
go. (I work with my friend,
the Joan Didion one, on weekends.)
There is often silence at work.
No in-betweens glaze us: empty squares
or swarms; a few happy visits.
A coworker of mine walks by
smiling, in his blue LA hat
that I haven't seen him wear
before today. The brightness of it
surprises on someone who has worn
only uniform-matching grey/black this year.
He looks me in the eye
as he passes behind the line.
He has earrings and teeth. He
turns ten years older than me
in six days; in thirty eight
I will turn nine years younger
than him. Nothing exists between us
besides a recent recognition of cologne
he wears, scents take their places,
you know. He flirts with women
but is kind and responsibly minded.
He will come by six times,
maybe ten on a slow night.
Empty space between them to fill.
Awe is hard on cafeteria nights,
but leaving the slow-closing front door
at the end of the night
sky rushes in and few droplets,
and I meet, briefly, the devastation
of jet-grey grandeur, tacky firmament pinpricks,
eternal anxieties abstracted enough to respect
their density fluttering above the concrete,
and then I am in bed,
vast spaces filled by jittering beige
walls, monotony, thoughts of teenage romance,
setting aside my reading and writing
without any relief to the act.
I fade slippery into Ash Wednesday.
Micah Gresl-Turner is turning nineteen and living in northern Ohio.