Love Explained

By Jennifer Michael Hecht b. 1965

Guy calls the doctor, says the wife’s

contractions are five minutes apart.

Doctor says, Is this her first child?

guy says, No, it’s her husband.

I promise to try to remember who

I am. Wife gets up on one elbow,

says, I wanted to get married.

It seemed a fulfillment of some

several things, a thing to be done.

Even the diamond ring was some

thing like a quest, a thing they

set you out to get and how insane

the quest is; how you have to turn

it every way before you can even

think to seek it; this metaphysical

refraining is in fact the quest. Who’d

have guessed? She sighs, I like

the predictability of two, I like

my pleasures fully expected,

when the expectation of them

grows patterned in its steady

surprise. I’ve got my sweet

and tumble pat. Here on earth,

I like to count upon a thing

like that. Thus explained

the woman in contractions

to her lover holding on

the telephone for the doctor

to recover from this strange

conversational turn. You say

you’re whom? It is a pleasure

to meet you. She rolls her

eyes, but he’d once asked her

Am I your first lover? and she’d

said, Could be. Your face looks

familiar. It’s the same type of

generative error. The grammar

of the spoken word will flip, let alone

the written, until something new is

in us, and in our conversation.

Source: Funny (University of Wisconsin Press, 2005)

Biography

Poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht earned a BA in history from Adelphi University and a PhD in the history of science from Columbia University. Her collections of poetry include the highly praised The Next Ancient World (2001)—which won the Tupelo Press Judge’s Prize in Poetry, the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award, and ForeWord Review’s Poetry Book of the Year Award—and Funny (2005), winner of the . . .

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