My Bicycle
Pennies, quarters gathered
from my mother’s change
purse for weeks, tumbled
from the jar to be rolled,
a heavy ffteen dollars.
Foster Fanning’s Bicycle
Repair Shop had seven used
bikes lined up at the curb.
We had just enough for the least
expensive one. Mr. Fanning
had cobbled together a mangy
hybrid from his stock of broken
bikes, a heavy-duty frame,
the fork and fenders from
a Monkey-Ward, one wheel
from a J. C. Higgins, the other
from a Schwinn, and handlebars
like horns on a steer, from God
knows. He gave it a new paint
job with a brush: thick,
shiny black enamel.
He said it was a Roadmaster,
though the logo had vanished
under the paint. So my bicycle
was nameless, like Dickinson’s
frog. It ate puffed rice and wore
white tee-shirts with rolled-up
sleeves. It sat at the back
of the classroom and never
raised its hand. My bike and I
rode down the street quite
anonymous, forgettable,
like a stranger in an unmarked
grave, the hero in an unpublished
story, a nameless Samaritan
too good to have a name.
Poems by Malcolm Glass have been published in many journals, including Poetry (Chicago), Nimrod, The Sewanee Review, High Plains Literary Review, The Laurel Review, and Prairie Schooner. He is a retired professor of creative writing and former editor for Zone 3 and Cumberland Poetry Review. Glass has published seven books of poetry and several books on the craft of writing.
As a writer he has been guided by a comment W. H. Auden made to him fifty-seven years ago: “The best way to become a poet is to write oneself through the history of poetry in English.”
The Paddock Review 