With a Minor in History

Anyone on campus could have easily
Discovered his unlisted number,
This Doctor Lyon,

More like a long-beaked water bird,
Who took brown-bagged cash in twenties.
Five hundred dollars a student fortune then

But it was pay or who knew what in Puerto Rico.
Or a Florence Crittenden Home for Unwed Mothers.
Coat hangers and such like also in the mix.

Thud, thud, a dorm-mate’s soft percussive
Sounding through the fire doors, night after night
Her sit-drop down the metal stairs

Like a warning drumbeat.
Which it was.
                      In the end she married—
Another option—moved off campus which was

Also how it was.
                      Another slight percussive: Doctor Lyon
Plops his cash uncounted in a bottom desk drawer,
Saying I was a very lucky little lady

To have an Army doctor, that his service a great risk
Which was also true.
                                  He told of being stationed
In Holland after World War II, a young Dutch girl

Brought to the morgue, skin like mine.
He said that: Skin like yours.
Said he went back after hours,

Cut a piece of inner thigh to make himself—
Here he waved what I think at first to be a fan
He kept in his desk calendar,

The kind of fan in Southern church pews.
In fact, a bookmark shaped like a human skull,
Calvarium bones marked and labelled.

My appointment was a Saturday in May.
Always Saturdays when his wife
Visited her mother down in New Paltz.

Some weeks it took for me to wonder
What else went on, me
Stretched out on his table.

My friend, who also saw him, said no,
No mention of a Dutch girl
Or sign of any bookmark souvenir.

Wendell Hawken came to poetry late, earning her Warren Wilson MFA decades after college. Publications include four full collections, the most recent being After Ward (2022) chronicling consequences of her son’s quadriplegic accident. Hawken lives on a farm outside Boyce, VA, in Clarke County with two dogs.

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