The Exact Change

By Joel Brouwer b. 1968 Joel Brouwer

He slaughtered a six of Miller in thanks

when his supposed schizophrenia turned

out to be mere panic, fewer than half

the syllables and “easily managed with

the new medications.” Chanted that mantra

when his piano teacher’s voice droned on

like an undertow beneath Chopin hours

after she herself had gone home to Queens

and when stop signs seemed to say slightly more

than stop, seemed in fact to convey highly

specific messages to him and him alone

suggesting he assume certain key

responsibilities including twenty-four-hour

telephone contact with his finacée

“to make sure nothing bad happens to her”

and the immediate emergency

closure of the Holland Tunnel…Oh, come

on, Doc! If this isn’t schizo what is?

And after all it took so long to nose

the rental car’s savage servility

through New Jersey for Thanksgiving at her

mother’s that by the time he arrived he

can’t possibly have been the same person

he had been when he left Brooklyn and is

that not a kind of multiple person-

ality? It took hours. And then it was

awkward. Which could describe so many things.

Joel Brouwer, "The Exact Change" from And So. Copyright © 2009 by Joel Brouwer. Reprinted by permission of Four Way Books.

Source: And So (Four Way Books, 2009)

Biography

Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, poet Joel Brouwer is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and Syracuse University. Brouwer is the author of several collections of poetry, including And So (2009); Centuries (2003), a National Book Critics Circle Notable Book; and Exactly What Happened (1999), winner of the Larry Levis Reading Prize from Virginia Commonwealth University. He has also published several chapbooks. Brouwer has been . . .

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