Jennifer, dark-haired, olive-skinned,

studious, with Goldwater glasses,

introduced me one afternoon

in her Harvard dormitory

to the poems of One Times One:

she was sitting on the bed,

cross-legged, barefoot, as she read

if everything happens that can’t be done.

Alexis, petite, with honey-coloured curls,

acted a scene with me

from The Lion in Winter

(Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry Plantagenet)

where we had to kiss.

She surprised me by nudging

my tongue with hers.

Becca was a bit younger,

literate and brassy:

we scooped ice-cream together in the Square

that Tracy Chapman summer.

I liked her frank language

(I’d call her Boris, as in Boris Becker,

and she'd clobber me with four-letter insults).

I shared her love of old movies:

Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant,

and the two Hepburns.

Michelle was sweet,

small, gentle, pale:

didn't quite seem twenty,

more like early teens.

She told me of classes

where she had learned Hebrew

through Peanuts comic strips

where ha ha would be rendered with a chet.

We’d watch cheesy sitcoms in her dorm room,

or fling a kooshball at each other in mine.

She might have even told me knock-knock jokes.

Once we playfully tussled,

and one of her socks came off.