Robert Harlow

A Harvard Education

She went there, to the school,
that is, but I didn’t.
I was a singer,
just a singer in a rock and roll band,
and she took it off,
her green dress, dark,
short and tight,
and was wearing nothing
under it. No bra, slip,
or panties, just her.

I am tired of underwear,
she said, before I could
even get the words out
to ask the question
she knew I had to ask
when I saw what was not
beneath her dress

and stalls that memory
forever in that time and place,
my small apartment
above a hardware store
just off Harvard Square
somewhere in the late 1990’s

but comes back
when I remember
what she said next
as she stepped out
of the dress,
stepped toward me—

But you don’t have to tell anyone.

 

Robert Harlow resides in upstate NY. He is a professional stilt walker and teaches fire eating, juggling, and other circus arts. He is the author of Places Near and Far (Louisiana Literature, 2018). His poems appear in Poetry Northwest, RHINO Poetry, Slipstream, Cottonwood, The Midwest Quarterly, and elsewhere. Or so he has been led to believe.