*

Poet Alfred Nicol writes The Times: Ichabod’s Diary and several other poems written in his voice appear in my second collection of poems, Elegy for Everyone. This new poem in Ichabod’s voice, Persnickety Ichabod, Class of ’74, represents the only appearance of the persona in my new collection, Animal Psalms, published this year by Able Muse Press. Ichabod finds himself at a high school reunion and, having found himself, wishes there was some way he could get lost. Unfortunately, as noted in one of his diary entries, “one can’t get away / without having to stay / somewhere else, so it’s pointless to travel.”

Poet Alfred Nicol

Persnickety Ichabod, Class of ‘74

I went to the reunion. Don’t ask why.

I got the invitation, told them I

would just as soon we kept a little distance,

but soon grew tired of hearing their insistence,

deleting all the email that they sent,

so I broke down, and got dressed up, and went

to eat some chicken in a function room

and find out what their séance might exhume.

The years made dull boy Jack a full-grown bore

and he was there to meet me at the door.

He talked about a girl I used to date

whom he’d been chatting up. “She’s looking great.”

He did something peculiar with his lips

and something early Elvis with his hips.

At once I was transported to the present.

“Yes. Right. Well, she must have found that pleasant.”

I rummaged in my Social Crisis Kit

for something more than Difficulty Hearing;

excused myself to stage a Coughing Fit

when I had no success with Disappearing;

looked over people’s heads to find the bar.

They flag you down. They ask you how you are.

You’re everybody’s buddy, chum, amigo…

It’s a back-slapping gauntlet for the ego.

You smile like mad. You hustle, ill at ease,

to beat the market trading pleasantries

while running toward what you’re running from:

The man you would avoid you have become.

— Alfred Nicol