The Million Dollar Bridge
The city does not remember itself
in decades past, poised on the cusp,
and the sailors and fishermen who
used to slip out of bars on Fore Street
find their living elsewhere now,
in care of their children or nurses.
I remember a downtown building
in demolition, empty and open in front.
At night, bright colored lights
fell on two life-sized dinosaurs,
Tyrannosaurus and Stegosaurus,
made of wood, possibly,
and covered with plaster and paint
by some upstart artist who
stuck them there so kids like me
would have something to marvel at
as they came over the bridge, the bridge
we called the Million Dollar Bridge,
though surely it cost more than that.
I can’t tell if my memory of those dinosaurs
is real, and I know I said the city was
on the cusp, but a city is always
on the cusp, like the people
who call it home, endlessly shifting
in time with the dinosaurs
and the kid who loved them, in the car
with his parents coming over
the bridge, past waterfront bars, old
cobbled streets, and quiet fishermen
trapped in nets they crafted by hand.
The Woman Who Rang Our Doorbell
We’ll never know
if her story was true:
her nephew needed
bone marrow
and she was going
door to door
raising money
for a transplant.
My son disappeared
to his room
and came back
with a ten.
I shouldn’t have done that,
he said when she left,
I think she was lying.
He thought himself stupid
until he figured
she wouldn’t have asked
unless she felt
she needed it badly,
for bone marrow or
something else.
Back in his room
later that day
nothing had changed
but the loss of
ten dollars,
worth far less
than greeting ugliness
with beauty
undeterred.
Scene from Last Thursday
L texts from the dentist’s
to tell me C needs his wisdom teeth
out and my response is wtf?
because we just finished
paying off his braces but
later at home L says that’s why
because if he doesn’t get them out
all that work will be for
nothing if they tear through
and start screwing with
his other teeth but
I’ve stopped paying attention
and instead I’m thinking why
are they called wisdom teeth
and why if they’re so
esteemed do we get them
yanked and does all that yanking
incrementally decrease
the world’s level of wisdom
or is it the other way around
and the coffers of wisdom fill
because we’re smart enough to
rip those suckers out before
we’re all walking around
jaw-hacked and tooth-snaggled
who knows I say out loud
and L looks funny at me
which signals I’ve answered
a question she hasn’t asked
which signals I wasn’t listening
and the eyes she makes tell me
in no uncertain terms
in case I didn’t know already
which one of us is
unwise.
Mike Bove is the author of two books of poetry: Big Little City (2018) and House Museum (2021). His work has appeared in the U.S., U.K., and Canada in publications including Poetry East, Rattle, The Maine Review, and the anthologies Wait: Poems From The Pandemic and Writing The Land Northeast. In 2021, he was winner of the Maine Postmark Poetry Contest.
He is Professor of English at Southern Maine Community College. He was a founding Board Member of the Foundation for Portland Public Schools, and currently serves on the Board of The Mockingbird Foundation, a national music education non-profit managed and run by fans of the rock band Phish. A musician himself, Mike plays guitar in The ProfTones, a Portland-based cover band made up of college professors.
Mike lives with his family in Portland, Maine where he was born and raised.