Two Poems//Jeffery Berg
Yearbook, 1986
It was a great year, cries the cartoon bald eagle,
bouquet of balloons in its talons’ grip.
“Man in Motion” boosts gray, misty mornings
with brassy synths, as a man breaks free to rise
higher, higher, blazing into plasmatic sun.
Portraits of perms and bowl cuts. I run
a brittle black comb through bangs,
I perfect an open-mouthed pout
in a giant tan wicker chair.
The First-Grade grads sing power pop,
squeeze Care Bears to their chests
at ceremony, looking out at prospective wastelands.
There are bygone Big Mac days in rooms
of erased people. The vinyl juniper green
nap mat sticks to my face as we remain
squirmy, earthbound. Hot pink marker X’s
across faces of Greenville. I write to my friend,
Dear God, Let me and you go up. Scalloped
orange paper stapled round school boards.
Paper—glittered, Elmers-dried—drifts, deteriorates.
Could I go back, warn the boy I crushed on
that he’d die in a workplace accident 35 years from now?
A pompous poem in the back dedicated only to boys
who will grow into men who will hold the future
of all living things. I am here to break
surly bonds as I race across blacktop,
under the sun-blaze, slowly evolving
into smithereens.
Somewhere in Time
His favorite, our first
in the Poughkeepsie movie house.
Scrawny, bald, gap-toothed, prone
to flannels, jeans, I looked nothing
like Reeve, his debonair air,
wavy brown hair, the globes of his ass.
Into evening, the record of John Barry’s score
filled our split-level as if we were in
golden-hued romance upon bluffs
as we domesticated upon linoleum
with neighbors and noisy kids
under a grayish dusk. In a long ago move,
I gave away his records. I wish them back
for a bit, and then, I wish them away again.
We woke to Sanka, its sharp taste,
nostalgic swill. Spoons rested against
tan mugs under spider plants. We woke
to the trash truck scuttling the block.
We fought about moving.
I was a silly accountant,
with my coffee Thermos, crisp pencils,
whirring calculator, always
on the move. John Barry’s music swells,
spills out my Bose. Amused
how treacly it sounds. I shake my head,
getting out the shower. But soon,
on the edge of the bed, I’m a
whimpering wreck. I never drove back,
but I heard it was gutted. I lay on my back
like Reeve did. I saw his In the Gloaming,
where a kid comes back to his family,
his mother, played by Glenn Close,
who didn’t treat him so good. As Superman,
Reeve spun our Earth backwards.
In Somewhere in Time, shut-eyed on the bed
of the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island,
he wills himself to his old flame in a parallel timeline.
Something cynical, demeaning, the way they wheeled him out
at awards shows for applauding, whimpering stars.
Why do so many good guys suffer?
There are fingerprints
I know are not my own,
on the brass switch plate I never use
in the back of the kitchen.
I keep living through the going back
to snowfall outside the movie house,
sodium golden glow over the lot. Gray canvas
jackets, me scraping windshield ice,
brushing it away with my coat sleeve.
Then, that yawning, metal sound of the car door
opening, and the lugging slam of its shut.
Copper ’79 Buick Electra.
Breath visible as heaters warmed.
Dash lighter awaiting my Camel.
Wipers eek to keep up, a tiny view of road
like a view of sea through the porthole of a ship.
I could swerve, end it there.
But I choose to keep him for as long as I can.
Jeffery Berg's poems have appeared in various journals, most recently in Impossible Archetype and Pine Hills Review. He lives between Jersey City and Provincetown and reviews films for Film-Forward. His debut poetry collection, Re-Animator, is forthcoming from Indolent Books in 2026.