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276 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1994
Who was responsible for the Ice Man showing up? The Ice Man was Jimmy Burns, big, big guy who tended to pin girls (like me) against the wall in front of their boyfriends and say, “You know I think you’re really cute,” and cop a feel and give them a big wet smooch and no one dared lift a finger. It was really terrifying. To be pinned like that by one of the biggest guys you had ever seen who was drunk out of his mind in front of ten of your good friends who just stared in horror. “She doesn’t know I’m teasing. Do ya, Linda?” The Ice Man was reputed to have killed and maimed many kids in Watertown during his wonder years.
Lying on the ground in the mud, in the rain, I felt like the whole place had been turned into a giant mouth. It was terrifying. The sounds of feet traipsing all night long up and down the muddy hills turned into a gigantic rhythm like a mouth smacking its lips continually. [...] A speedfreak with spidery repetitious gestures danced in front of us all night long. Kind of a conductor. Way down at the bottom of the hill the musicians were like dark trees lined in light wavering in front of our eyes. One more, just one more uttered some distant part of my will or mental faculty forcing my attention to stagger along with the entertainment. This was history. It was really horrible but my alternative was to try and sleep on the muddy rag. Impossible.
He was such a kit magician – wands with banners that said boom on one side and had a picture of a rabbit on the other. I was fascinated by the relative sincerity of his delivery. I started to think of this suburban backyard magician as someone less smart but slightly more successful than most poets I know. It’s not like we can farm ourselves out to bar mitzvahs and weddings like saxophone players can, or this guy. Even a clown can work the kid circuit. How have poets managed so utterly to get no piece of the pie. It’s some kind of trick, a vanishing act that we have performed on ourselves.