Exoskeleton

Kavanagh's "I Had a Future"

Exoskeleton 
Before reading Kavanagh's "I Had a Future"

It's 1989.

I am 26.

Off the Metrobus walking home from class.

It's late afternoon.

But it was probably morning.

At school I'd peeked.
In my professor's mailbox:

my short story she'd liked, 
given to a colleague,

returned to her covered in angry red.

I remember a bright sun and walking.

A sudden buffeting wind animated the avenue.
And I stepped into a phone booth
to avoid pelting rubbish and dust

propelled in the gusts swirling 
in columns over Columbia Road:

yellow fliers, pizza boxes, butts, 
grit, dirt, the news.

Maybe it's 1990.
The Cold War is over.

Only a few miles from me Dick Cheney's 
heart rate climbs as he thinks 
about oil in the sand.

I'm not yet 27.

I yet had no exoskeleton.

In my sofabed on S St NW

the cockroaches are unaware.
I'm almost home. There, I've done it,

I've plagiarized Patrick Kavanagh.

And I hadn't even read him yet.

                      -J. O'Brien

Read Kavanagh's "I Had a Future" with brief commentary.