a poem by Victoria Redel

Victoria Redel, poet, novelist. In 2002 I studied with her at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. This poem is from her first volume of poetry, Already the World:

Maybe There Is Nothing Special Going On

Maybe there is nothing special going on.
We are reading or we are eating supper,

Maybe we are driving a back road. I look over
and see that if I stopped the car and got out,

if I started dancing and singing on the loose dirt,
if I put down the book and held your face in my hands,

or pressed myself to you, it would not matter,
You are too far from me.

Grief—I’ve seen her at night;
the way she dresses up, my god, she sparkles,

she shimmers. I can't blame you. I'd go to her too.
Who wouldn't want her and then want her again

once they'd felt all the ways
she makes a body shake.