Passing

This afternoon I received news that Eric Van Cleve, one of our June Poets from 2003, died last week at home in Ohio. Eric took his B.A. at Ohio State and would have completed his M.F.A. at Washington University next month. I remember him well, but am sorry to say that I had not kept in touch. I do know that several of "our Junies" ended up in the program at Washington (and several others at UT-Austin), and it sounds like Eric had many friends in his grad program.

His obituary can be found here.

Below are the only two poems of Eric's that I could put my hands on. These are the poems he selected for inclusion in the 2003 program anthology:

POEM

The man who sells mirrors is in denial.

With every purchase,

he loses a twin

but cannot bring himself

to take a chair

away from the table.

When he has finished eating,

he stares into his plate

and watches the one

who will never leave,

the one holding a fork

scratching his clean, white cheek.

** **

It depends.

It depends on the wind

for the man who sells perfume

on a street corner,

beside a hotdog vendor.

Which way does it blow?

Do the hotdogs smell

like prostitution?

Does a cloud of mustard or relish

spread around his tiny glass bottles?

Only the birds

are more confused.

A hungry pigeon,

a poor man, close enough

to peck the other's eyes out.

*** ***

RECYCLING

There will come a point in history,

because everyone agrees

that history seems to be a line,

when, for wood, we will chop down

the last of the telephone poles

and pry apart our log cabins.

There will be no more room

for cemeteries, the dead dug up

to accommodate new bodies, the old bodies

kept in school, being that students

will no longer be with us.

On the way to the bathroom, one night

a man will peek through his curtains

and see a ghost:

a tree, a headstone or child.