The Boy Poet from Cayuga Street (a short story)

The Boy Poet from
Cayuga Street



When Mr. Chick Evens turned nineteen-years old, he had now written twenty-one poems. He had Miss Marty Dickenson review them, and retype them for him, along with a bit of spell checking and correcting, back in the summer of 1966. She was twenty-seven years old, and Eddy Bacon, was twenty-nine years old, Marty’s old boyfriend. He was trying to sober up, put his marriage back together. Up to a few months earlier, Marty and Eddy were an item (as he’d often refer to him and Marty; or boyfriend, girlfriend), now supposedly both coming from different worlds, Marty still was drinking heavily.

“You look good today,” said Marty to Evens who had come over to her home on Dale Street to pick up his manuscript of poetry.
“Yes,” said Evens, “I am this morning, I feel great, like a poet I want to be, by the looks of the papers you have really made my poetry look clean and neat.”
“It’s just part of being a secretary, it’s what I do.” She remarked, but was taken back at his comment.
“Yes,” Evens went on “I want to be a great poet someday. I’ve always wanted to be a poet, started writing poetry at twelve-years old; by the time I was fifteen had some published in the High School Newspaper, at Washington High School. That is what I wanted to be at twelve, and now at nineteen, I want the same thing. When I’m sixty, I will still want to be a great poet; or maybe just a good poet; or maybe a good simple poet. For a moment I thought I might be, but I’m too young, and I have only twenty-one poems.
“Oh, you’ll be exactly that, a great simple poet, because when people want things bad enough they get them.”
“I’m unsure now. At twelve it appeared to be simple: at nineteen, I think it takes a lifetime?”
“I’d say you have a good start.”
“No kidding?”
“Of course you’ll be a known poet in your time.”
“No, I’m not all that sure anymore.”
“The odds are for you, that you’ll be a poet.”
“Don’t say I will just to appease me please.”
“Did you see Eddy?” she asked.
“He’s off the booze, getting back with his ex wife, I saw him driving a milk truck. He said you both were no longer an item.”
“He’s going to quite for good, wish I could, but I’m not ready.”
“Maybe you will, I’ll say a prayer for you.”
“I don’t feel like quitting, or dating, or doing much, just kind of sitting around the house seems to comfort me, smoking and drinking, smoking and drinking and going to sleep, and waking up and going to work, and starting all over again.”
“It’s a cute little green house you have here.”
“My parents left it to me, they’re deceased now. I didn’t finish the whole body of work, I did a little over half of your manuscript, I know you’ll understand, I’m just too…just can’t seem to get into it. But you’ll be a poet someday, I can feel that.”
He opened the screened in metal door, walked out of the doorway with a folder of his poems in it, folded under his arm, and armpit, tightly.
“Amigo,” she yelled at Evens through the big bay window, tapping on the window with her fingernails, “If you see Eddy, say hello to him for me will you?”
He could see her, read her lips, her body language, hear her slightly, and nodded his head, confirming a yes, he’d do so. He had a crush on her, she was pretty, thin, short dark hair, but was aging quickly, too quickly, and she was in pain, and she’d kill him with her boxed up emotions; he thought, whispered to himself, “She’d make good poetry like Plath or Saxton I bet.”


4-22-2009