Denise DuhamelA Different Story
The day after I'd written a poem about her, my new friend asks if I sometimes steal stories from other people's lives. She doesn't know many poets, but she once met a woman who wrote self-help books about dating. We're at a diner, where great stories are often exchanged. The writer utilized my new friend's tale of woe but made it even worse, more embarrassing than it actually was. I say writers are always stealing, we can't help ourselves, and she says she understands though it gives her the creeps. I don't confess my own theft but instead tell her about a poet whose ex writes thrillers. One of his recent characters has her name, her physical traits, and her most unflattering of habits. Worst of all, the character is stabbed to death in the final chapter. Writers must have a lot of issues, my new friend says, lifting the limp pickles off the pale inside of her hamburger bun. We both fall silent. She eyes me suspiciously as she salts her fries. I stop asking her about her past, about her day, fearing she'll tell me something so good I'll be tempted to take it for another poem. Our diet cokes are almost drained when she wonders if the poet, having suffered her own fictional fatality, has changed her ways, has stopped using her friends as subject matter. Imagine how you'd feel if someone recreated your life and it wasn't very pretty. I start to write the poem in my head, the one describing my blubber, my crowded teeth, my penchant for gossip, the smell of my feet after a long day in plastic sandals. My character is cheap, fearful, controlling, duplicitous, a dunce. Want to split a slice of pie? I think she says, but I am already slapping a twenty on the Formica table, sliding out of the booth. I have to get it all down before someone else does.
Denise Duhamel's work has appeared in current issues of Ontario Review, TriQuarterly, and Ploughshares. Her most recent book, Two and Two (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), is the winner of Binghamton University's Milt Kessler Book Award. Other titles include Mille et un sentiments (Firewheel Editions, 2005) and Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001). She is an associate professor of English at Florida International University in Miami.
