photo by Jerome Sala
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The Repairman
I can’t get rid of him. One day I found him sprawled on the floor tinkering
with the radiator. He was very vague about who had called him (not me)
but seemed to think he had every right to be there. Then he handed me a bill
for several thousand dollars. I said: “I can’t deal with this now, I’m late
for an appointment.” But when I got to my office, he was already standing
in the hallway tapping the walls with a concerned look. “Structural tests,” he said.
After that I began seeing him everywhere, like a shadow carrying a toolbox.
He followed me to school as sure as Mary’s little lamb. Later, he followed me
into a bar, sat a few stools away, sipped a beer, and made fun of my taste
in game shows. He even had the audacity to ring my mother’s doorbell on
Thanksgiving claiming he had come to look at the dishwasher, but instead
got into a discussion with her about fall fashions. In all fairness, he doesn’t
seem dangerous or malicious; he’s never tried any funny business. But I have
to ask myself if he’s fixed one thing. The answer is I don’t think he even tries.
He just seems to want to be with me. Meanwhile, the bills keep coming.
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Elaine Equi’s latest book is The Intangibles from Coffee House Press. Her other books include Ripple Effect: New & Selected Poems, Click and Clone, and Sentences and Rain. Widely published and anthologized, her work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Big Other, the Brooklyn Rail, The Nation, The New Yorker, Poetry, and in many editions of the Best American Poetry. She teaches at New York University and in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at The New School.
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"The Painter," collage by John Ashbery, 2014.