36 Undulant I'd made plans to meet you in Bar Noir on 18th; you were there; we drank. What happened after that, in the Logan Square flat, is that in defrocking you knocked over an antique lamp bequeathed to me by my aunt in Mahopac. Serendipity, I thought, stunned then into silence by your bedroom élan, Outside, a sultry night simmered; this night of all nights, scattered green glass littered my bedroom floor, & I finally got taken, past liquor, to what eternity was only in your mouth— as though you'd jumped from a forest scene (ferns, redwoods), a world of pagan magic, into a scene still undulant with possibilities— —Adam Fieled UndulantMONDAY, 2021 Trooper In La Tazza, a coffee shop in Manayunk, a stairway led you stiffly into a high-ceiling’d, Spartan, red-painted basement, where I wound up with Chris one autumn night in °97. How Jeremy's group picked us up I don’t know, but we all wound up in an apartment on Main Street. Everyone was wearing army jackets; Jeremy was uncharacteristically quiet. He had already lost control of his cabal, & blew in the wind. The poems lay, then, wrapped in a dossier-style presentation, at Villanova, among other secret files; as they lay, also, in Jeremy’s brain, as tokens that he once cared to be a real army-trooper. Jeremy walks down Main Street. In his hands is a copy of “d” magazine, which he hopes to consign anywhere. Rather, he hopes to dump in the river, a few blocks down. The fame he wants is fast, or nothing. He always thought he would make it someday. If he doesn’t, it’s not his fault. Perhaps he should move to New York, after all. Or teach, tutor, bartend, give up the architecture routine. His brain is a jumble of low & high. It’s worth something to him, to be big. Why starve? Why play pauper? It’s true: unless he feels royal, royally protected, he can’t write. Main Street dead-ends: it’s ruthlessly midnight. —Adam Fieled ‘Trooper 37