In the 1990s in Indiana and probably across
The Midwest a neverending cavalcade of Jeremies
tromped the halls of high schools and middle schools,
newly-minted alternative schools and juvie halls,
they slung fast food in Arby’s and Wendy’s,
they went out wakeboarding on Winona Lake
with six Purple Passion beverages
for their sexually inexperienced teenaged admirers,
The Jeremies like an ooze, a blob, a Blob of Jeremies
oozing from the painted cinder blocks that led
from Math to Science to History to English,
the Jeremies oozing and creeping and
insinuating themselves into everything,
the scuttling Jeremies like cockroaches
gather and disperse, collect and scatter,
some of them hoisting up three pointers
under Friday Night Gymnasium Lights,
some of them pissed off beating cheap drum heads
in a rented parks department building playing a punk show,
the righteous Jeremies, the angry Jeremies,
the Jeremies of ubiquitous understated retort,
fumbling with the bra strap of their Saturday dates
parked near the boat ramp at Carr Lake,
the Jeremies sitting at home staring at the wall
touching themselves to full blast Danzig,
the Jeremies like fascist soldiers goosestepping
their way door to door in Student Council community service
leaf raking, the Jeremies smoking marijuana seeds
from a jerry-rigged pipe of assembled miscellaneous hardware parts,
the Jeremies trying to stone themselves infertile
on a spacetrip into light,
the Jeremies escaping the basement via easement
to climb into the night, the Jeremy’s
walking the highway to Dad’s house high
on half a box of Dramamine with a Robitussin chaser,
the Jeremies with their never-stated questions,
the Jeremies with their quiet rage, their misunderstood
understanding, the Jeremies with their weary vows,
the Jeremies with the girlfriends they try hard
not to knock up, the girlfriends with whom they slink
through the English hallways past all classrooms,
the useless Jeremies, the ugly Jeremies, the Jeremies waiting
and waiting and waiting to get out.
*previously published in Anti-Heroin Chic
Steve Henn teaches high school English in northern Indiana. His previous books include Guilty Prayer (Main Street Rag, 2021) and Indiana Noble Sad Man of the Year (Wolfson, 2017). He’s proud of the children of himself and late American artist Lydia Henn. He roots for the Fighting Irish, played high school soccer, and gives poetry readings in all kinds of places, from Pittsburgh to Long Beach, travel conditions and money conditions and time permitting. His new collection, Trying To Catch a Flame in this Windstorm at the End of the World (2025), is available now from Arroyo Seco Press, Amazon, and other places. Deep Cuts is due out from Wolfson Press in 2026.