A couple hours later, at Pegasus Books on Solano Avenue in Berkeley, I’m not particularly happy either. I’m hunkered down in the poetry section and see two of my books on the shelf: Home Course in Religion and Junior College. I open the first book to the title page, where I have personalized the copy to Claire. Who was Claire? I wonder. I open the second book, which I’ve apparently dedicated to Toby. Perhaps Toby was Claire’s dog?
I leave the bookstore, my shadow tagging along as if it were a friend. At home I count my blessings. My teeth remain in neat rows and my knuckles continue to knock on doors—I do possess ambition. I’m thin. I’m courteous when it counts. I have a wife who loves me almost all the hours of the day.
But I do notice that the hair on my scalp has thinned and my once muscled chest is now part of my padded abs. I’m losing some of myself, piece by piece. My legs, however, still stand with me, two faithful troopers. And my talent remains: at the count of three, I can whip the horse inside me and begin down a path in search of a poem. True, it was only last week I received a rejection slip from a literary magazine in the Midwest no one has heard of, but still!
—Gary Soto, “Reporting On Our Bodies,” What Poets Are Like: Up and Down of the Writing Life (Sasquatch Books, 2013)
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