Stephen Haven: Iowa City, 1983

I remember best the Oxford shoes, the three-piece suits,

How he always sat in the back row of our summer class, 

Striped tie, maroon and gold, if I recall that one day right. 

He was 10 years older than the rest of us who Heartlanded 

Whitman, Dickinson that July. Iowa City, 1983, no A.C., 

Landlocked in that humidity, except in groceries, 

Theaters, maybe the rare café, a hamburger 

And milkshake town in those days, 90 degrees forcing us 

Out to Dingleberry’s Quarry, where we swam 

Without our skivvies, cows wandering into the opposite 

Mucky end. We dodged their pies, occasional 

Water moccasins, perched on rocks, dove in the deep spots. 

But it was coffee after class when Craig joined our jeans 

And T’s. When he packed a pipe and lit it, we broached 

The subject: “What’s with the suit? I mean, really?”

“The distillation of evil from the claims of innocence is ironic,” 

Reinhold Niebuhr said. I’m broke, said Craig, a victim 

Of circumstance. He was rich, once, so the story went. 

Now he had nothing but old fancy suits his parents 

Once bought him. I didn’t like to doubt ew

Another man’s story, didn’t know him, glad to share 

A cup of coffee, talk about my pending trip. 

My girlfriend and I would eat nothing but oysters 

And bluefish. But what about the apartment, he asked? 

He needed two weeks to get back on his feet. 

I don’t remember the entire circumstance 

That led to yes, or the exact chain of events that never 

Consulted my lover, but he moved in the day we left, 

Ours a two-bedroom second story, nothing fancy. 

One window was broken when we came back. 

Glass shards littered the nook we squeezed 

Into our galley kitchen. Yes, he slept in our double bed

Just as he said he wouldn’t. “What’d you expect?” 

My girlfriend asked. The Wild Turkey gone, a couple 

Hairs still glued to the empty bottle, our double Dutch 

Porcelain stuccoed all over, egg yolk, spaghetti hardened 

In its dead sauce, dried mint chocolate chip, the package 

Gracing the garbage. Two weeks’ worth of God knows what. 

I reached him by phone in our favorite watering hole

Where each night T.A.’s held prisms to the human 

Stars again, glinted also against a sign that flashed 

The clarity of the Rockies and everything we drank, 

Artists, writers, a couple historians, one crazed evening 

A theologian, all of us ganging on my lovely girlfriend

Who refused the earth would go to the tern 

Of an intercontinental missile, and then the flock 

Would follow… In so many words

God so loved the world… Whenever she left 

To pee or fill her glass, we laughed in a wisdom 

Beyond our drafts, jeered about unschooled 

Peasants, plebians. Craig asked did I find 

The check he left? “Must have blown out 

The blown-out window…” Stay right there, I said, 

We can talk it over a glass. “Tell you what,” 

He said, “Lend me your car, I’ll drive to Davenport, 

Pick up everything to make amends.” Two weeks later 

He hit me again: AT&T billed for long-distance, 

Numbers that offered nothing when I called them.

Then finally his grandmother: “Happened like this 

Many times before. We’ve washed our hands of him.” 

My girlfriend left me shortly after. I wondered 

What it meant to be a good partner, or if Niebuhr 

Was too hard on his fellow citizens, spent one long 

Lonely night with my girlfriend’s ex-bosom friend. 

I remember best the cartography of each failed kindness, 

At 4 her Irish daily milk and tea, smooth as Wild Turkey.

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Copyright 2023 Stephen Haven

Stephen Haven is a professor of English at Lesley University. His books include a memoir, The River Lock (Syracuse, 2008) and The Last Sacred Place in North America (New American Press, 2012).