Damian’s Tale
by david st. john
issue 64, 2017
Because I’d gotten there so early I’d grabbed a table right
outside The Novel Café next
To a hip young couple meditating on decorative foam leaves
floating atop their mega-lattes
& a quick glance pegged her as a devotee of another new hybrid
Eco-Goth look one just had to love
Though he was a more standard issue Santa Monica surf stud
in pale blond cords & curls
& the same smoky blue plaid Pendleton the Beach Boys wore
then Damian pulled up
Straight from the airport in what seemed the smallest rentable
sub-sub-compact I’d ever seen
& slowly unfolded his six-foot-six collapsible LA Laker’s body
& stood up rail-straight looking
At me grinning while I just shook my head & pretty soon we were
contemplating our own foamy leaves
& talking about some lines of Sophocles he’d been translating
that morning as the deadline
For his book got near & as we both put our intellects on pause
sipping our lattes in that momentary silence
We heard the girl say consolingly of course I always think about
you when I’m masturbating well
Almost always not always maybe but really most of the time—
so after that I admit
It was hard to go back to talking about versions of Sophocles
but Damian soldiered on
Telling me a girl he’d loved in his twenties had just written to say
she still thought of him a lot
Yet it wasn’t anything he imagined she’d remember—it was the way
he’d rested his hands on the yellow keys
Of a broken-down Yamaha upright in his old Chestnut St. apartment
& after finishing a piece
Would reach over & touch the earlobe of her right ear with one finger
& so he said we just never know
What makes lovers into lovers after all & what surprised him most
was that after all these years she’d taken
The time simply taken her time that she’d taken time at last to write
David St. John is the author and editor of several collections of poetry, essays, interviews, and reviews. Among his many awards, he has received the Rome Fellowship and the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He is the Chair of English and teaches in the PhD program in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Southern California.