Four Poems by Kyle Alderdice

Let them sleep

Once I wrote

A small moment

About two English soldiers

In France

In Love

In 1431. I didn’t

Do the research

On English soldiers in

France and I didn’t

Do the research

On Love

What I did

Was follow a moving spot

Around my room,

Frightened of bugs

Until I noticed it was

Love

A speck on my

Glasses

And my fear was my own head

Which I think

Is Love

And what I think

Starts war even

In France

In 1431

In A Place where

Love could

Exist

Between two soldiers

For all we know

And perhaps

This will be

The speck

Of research someone finds.

What we know

Of 1431 is

What was written

Down. What we know

Of today will be what

Was written down

I’m sure. We haven’t

Found the photos from

1431 yet

But I’ve heard their editing

Was quite advanced

So really you can’t

Believe anything

You see

These days

But maybe behind the

Love

Alterations

The specks on glasses

There will perhaps

Be Love

Between two soldiers

In France

In 1431.

I’m hoping

One day we find

A Pharaoh

Buried with his BC

Computer games, his PC

Favorites to play with in

The afterlife

(Though we should

Probably let them all

Sleep,

No curses please

From the stealing)

And maybe we

Should give the two soldiers

An afterlife

So I’ll get curses please

From the stealing (oh the bug)

Let them all sleep

The bug, the speck

From this far away

In time

Let them all sleep

Together

Good Luck

The day Eric takes two showers, one lit by normal

sunlight and the other in the dark (like an odd domestic

cave where instead of the Dead

Sea Scrolls one discovers the bent faded pages of the manual

for an electric razor), he thinks

that perhaps he feels amiss because he hasn’t written a letter in a long time, or

been in a store to buy a thing he likes but doesn’t really care too much about, or

played the clarinet (though his reeds are years dried), or

held a simple green balloon on a not-so-close friend’s birthday. He lets the water

hit his toes and his legs, numbing them to the heat while he thinks

the rest

of his body must gain something by soaking up steam in the air—the water

is too hot but he is afraid

to change it in case it grows too cold which is a component in a different

recipe for melancholy than the one he’s making. He thinks

of blue jello and he feels nostalgic

for a particular childhood that isn’t

quite his because his wasn’t a jello childhood. It must

be the sense of overwhelming

Americanness, he thinks,

the drugged remembrance of trying

to stand up dominos on a wall to wall carpet. This thought

comforts him and makes his throat catch and he dips

his chest into the hot throw of water hoping to shake

the balm and whatever shadow language he thinks

in. Eric feels like telling himself “good luck”

or something like it and he doesn’t know why

he needs luck, so naturally he feels it’s meant for another Him. He begins to forget

the water is there like it’s a smooth shirt you stop

feeling the minute after it’s been put on. He thinks

of the night when he and his friends went out and it ended

in the front of an unfamiliar bar, cold from the winter

windows and though he had the ghosts of salt and beer and mustard on his

fingers he began to pet his friend’s head and after a whiskey

in The Friend’s Apartment there was more and it all felt—he thinks—

inevitable and coming

for years but Eric left

for Eric’s Apartment at 4am and it

was so cold that by the time he was on his street feeling

accomplished he thinks

he might die and his chapped red lips the next day spoke as much about the biting

wind as it did his friend’s stubble and what was a long

time coming became quick and simple

regret which he’s much more trained

to process. What does one clean in a second shower, he thinks,

flipping up and down

the cap on a shampoo bottle he had used just hours before. He feels comfortable

in the smell of the soap that he’s bought

for years and that is a silky victory where

so much could have gone wrong. He thinks

of people who still haven’t found

Their Soap. He longs to know

again that safe feeling of being warm and surrounded by strangers and their friends and then

putting a hand up to a window,

icy like fear, and he thinks

that there will always be cold moments alone when you’re on the subway

platform and your coat is not enough but you don’t want

to be the one walking up and down along that ridged yellow line to stay

warm so you decide to play

Find The Rat by yourself though you know—well, he thinks

he knows—that even the rats are smart enough to be

in their apartments tucked in with

their families tonight and you check your recent

calls on your phone to see the last time

you called your mother. He thinks

of grilled hotdogs and how they aren’t really

a part of his life anymore and he can’t give an explanation for it. The certain canned

Americanness of childhood again sneaks in to say something and Eric

wonders if you can feel more naked than clothesless and he’s afraid to look

at his body so he leans into the water again to forget what he thinks

which is too many things to remember and yet he has a hard time forgetting. He’s lucky

he doesn’t hold more grudges; they can weigh

in a way. He’s also thinking about the whir

of ceiling fans though he may not realize it over the whir

of other worries. “Good luck” he thinks

again and he turns off the water to trick himself

into thinking he’s ready to be dry. Exhausted by the thought of his towels

needing washing for the rest of his life he plays down the idea of tomorrow with a compromise:

Don’t worry about a new outfit, you’ll just wear the same thing when you wake up.

It’s easier this way, he thinks.

His room alone is one with no temperature—though in it he’s felt

both too hot and too cold—and as he pulls

on a shirt he took from someboy else he runs

through every conversation that will happen in the next sixty

years and after turning off the lights and lying down with a yawn—jaw oddly sore, he thinks—

he thinks.

The Illusion of Control

It’s easier for him to think of it as a memory

Something he has already been through

As he is looking back on the moment

(from the moment)

Maybe sitting in a restaurant, later,

With his parents, or at a movie

Thinking

“So glad that’s over”

He thinks about how he used to do that

Now as he sits in a cafe (a diner, really)

In a weird lost adulthood that, somehow,

Feels less drunk than late childhood

Here’s how the simultaneous memory goes:

He’s sitting on the floor

(The phone is ringing in the diner now,

Odd)

Because there are not enough seats

In this school hallway, a college hallway

(Two boys walk into the diner with the opposite sense

Of self doubt he has in this memory)

And you can hear the self-consciousness

Creep under the doors; small rooms

Packed with many Yous trying to find some affirmation

From these strangers who stare at your back

(A man makes a joke asking to see a larger menu

The waiter doesn’t get it)

Other kids already showed up in gloves

To keep their hands warm? To protect them from the air?

If he had played poorly he could say

My hands got sick

(“Harry’s not free until after 11”

A man on the phone says; he might be Harry)

Once when he played he was told he was too distracted,

The room had many posters and he thought

It would be more impressive

If he seemed like he could play and read

About music theory at the same time

It isn’t

So he learned to play more passionately

By pretending to have passion

Like falling asleep—

You have to pretend you’re already doing it

These are all the things he is thinking,

In the hallway, from the restaurant

Or the theater,

From the diner years later

(Two girls were doing the crossword a minute ago

“North-South Divide”

And now they talk about the balance

of rosé and French Fries, whatever that means)

The memory has stopped playing

So he orders a coffee to start again

Why do we all drink coffee

With spoons in it?

He hates the wet ghost

Of a stirring spoon on a napkin

(A green tea box says:

“With white tea for smooth taste”)

He thinks he’s sitting next to a celebrity

Though he knows he’s not

He finds himself amused

By how convinced he is

(How long does a halved grapefruit last?)

Like a green countertop, the pianos are well-worn,

Well-played, hopefully from students

Playing well, playing “superiorally”

You get to test them first

But what do you play

When you get to test what you’re being tested on?

The illusion of control, like a pedal

Controlling something for later

Making the memory before it happens.

Highway Music

“Highway music: something that booms through the speakers, synchronized with the speed of the journey.” - Anne Garreta, Not One Day

We thought to go for a drive around midnight and I think we were both excited

about something but it may have not been the same thing. I’m still

in the age of making things up and I’m beginning

to think I always will be. We didn’t

tell each other what we were both excited about so we just got in the car.

He made an obvious choice to fiddle with the radio, like he wanted me

to watch him, and he landed somewhere between

a channel number I recognized and beyond, a wavelength playing

a song my father would have nodded his head to but

also would have said nothing about. Music is a child

’s odd burden, one to reject or to reclaim or to never think of again. These are the vague

thoughts I played with while assessing the temperature of the car and the idea that driving gives you powers beyond time, that you are

driving toward sunrise instead of its incessant driving toward you. I gave up

asking him questions about why or how, it didn’t feel productive

—can following ever be productive? Sometimes with him it is, it’s hard to answer

questions in the light

turned on by a car door opening. So let’s go, I thought, leaving

behind the crackling well-worn collection of songs I call my own and submitting

to the satellites in the sky and the mess of signals ahead.

Before we got on the highway we stopped

at a gas station though we were full and he told me to get out

and get beer which I did while he stayed in the car, the radio still playing—I think

he had found a program broadcasting an old live concert of some sort, it seemed

to have a plan to it. After the fluorescents I came back in the car with a case and he opened

one in an action like breath and foam ran down his face to the seat in front of him. I wanted

to ask something but I’ve been told

I ask too many questions and he seemed

so happy and I felt like I was a part of it so I didn’t ask what I didn’t even know

I wanted to ask. A white eighteen wheeler pulled in and I tried

to recall the size of the turnoff lane. It seemed

like a gas station for small stories like ours and suddenly I felt

too small. He handed me his beer like he wanted

to start driving but he also wanted

me to drink it so I did after closing

the door and we passed by the truck with its billboard

lights and its dark unlabeled sadness. I felt safe

in the car with him

and the beer

and the concert with its preserved applause

and its voices that may now be singing

past the threshold of death itself. I thought

of a line that someone paraphrased for me once, something about nights

in hospitals. I wish I looked

these things up but I let them hang contextless so hopefully they mean

nothing instead of something that I don’t want

to hear; it’s childish I know.

The lead singer was talking now, to the audience, thanking someone, I don’t know

who and I don’t know

why. The beer finished itself and another one awoke.

He looked

calm driving, the skin on his face almost a different material, lights

or moon or balm shining something the color of trust in the spaces

below his eyes. “Do you know

this band?” I asked. He smiled easily, like he was going

to say that I ask too many questions. I don’t know

why I felt younger than him in the moment but the passenger always feels

disempowered. “Keep a beer between us,” he said, eyes still

steady on the road like he’s a great

driver. The music wasn’t what you’d call night music but the moment

was what you’d call night. How did I know

he was going to light a cigarette? It’s a treat to watch

your idea of cool go through somebody’s brain before it happens. The windows were

already down and the inside of the car was hot besides the sweating

case against my leg. It was the first time I thought to question where we were going.

Kyle Alderdice was born on Long Island and was raised in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and North Carolina. After studying French and Political Science at Duke University he worked briefly for a tech startup and then pivoted to bookselling, managing an independent bookstore in Manhattan for the last five years. He is a current MFA candidate in fiction at UNC Wilmington.