In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Hopeless
  • John Meredith Hill (bio)

I could say straight out I was hopelessly in love with Pammy Jensen for ten years

& it might be true. Fourth grade stays in the mind as the onset of my long sorrow.

I saw her kissing Joey Pilcher in the cloakroom at Lincoln, Joey, my neighbor who didn’t know the meaning of enamored, though to be fair he’d not played much Scrabble.

I believed I knew about love, kind of, sort of, as we Midwesterners, many of us back then, tended to say about things. Modesty was a cardinal virtue & nice & fair

were words we embraced. At night in my childish prayers I asked God, really the ceiling, to bless Mom, Dad, Grandma, Great Aunt Bess & on down the lineup card.

Now it makes me smile to think of that Irish nanny to rich Pennsylvania families batting clean-up. Because this poem is grounded in Iowa, it must be the case

Pammy was long-limbed, blue-eyed & blonde because it’s true, but that’s beside the point because love is blind. In fifth grade I sent her my best Valentine & signed it “Dithy.”

Yes, I was a stone dork. I’d determined I needed a moniker, my first name kind of lame. [End Page 250] (There’s a word I wasn’t using in the Fifties unless referring to “Shep” Sheppard,

our phys. ed. teacher who’d lost a leg on Utah Beach.) When I told my mother about the card & my nom de plume, she bit her tongue too late to stifle a snicker. Mine

was a very nice childhood, privileged really. If I was slow to grow up in some ways, so what? In eighth grade I learned Phil Meers was feeling up Pam down in wood shop during

lunch hour. I took up tennis & pounded the fuzz off the ball with my “Pancho” Segura. In high school things got out of hand completely, what with Pam doing or having

done to her this & that. She’d grown up so fast college was no longer necessary. She found a job in an office, signed a lease on an apartment. I saw her one

last time the day of her wedding. This was the summer after the British Invasion & Pam looked lovelier than ever. I kissed her in her big white dress full on

the mouth & wished her all good things. I’d had a few Buds by then. Not much later I walked out to my car & crossed the river to sleep with a girl I never loved. [End Page 251]

John Meredith Hill

John Meredith Hill, a retired Peace Corps volunteer and graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, lives with his wife and their large dog in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and Provincetown, Massachusetts.

...

pdf

Share