Poetry By Chad Rutter

Sean Benham CC




Robert

              Sobriety: Day 117



I don't see him at every meeting, but Robert's here tonight.
I'm not using his real name in observance of the second A,
but it's a likewise sturdy name
for a man of his generation with a walrus mustache
and white shock of unruly hair grown
in defiance of his monk-like bald spot's encroachment.

When he sees me, Robert will make his way over,
(again, not his name. I wouldn't do that, Bob)
and using the language of The Rooms,
he’ll kick the tires of my recovery. Put a quarter in him,
and he’ll dispense Big Book wisdom, chapter and verse. 
He'll share the same personal anecdotes, pausing

in the same places for emphasis,
that he shared when we met two months ago.
I'm told "former" is not a modifier one can apply
to our condition, but the him of his stories
tips just past remembrance
into the banal myth of evangelical witness.

Once, after I mentioned I had taught university, 
he rushed over as we folded chairs to let me know
I wasn't "too smart for this," over-education ever
seen by salt of the earth as the fox in the hen house.
He told me one of the founders was a doctor,
after all. Roberts are keepers of program lore,

hoarding their years of recovery while swearing
"one day at a time." My very first meeting, 
gender segregated, was peopled entirely by Roberts.
Their sunken, watery eyes
searching my face for the man they’d been, or maybe
still were, white beards tobacco stained yellow

hiding mouths that told me I was the most important
person in that room. It was all too much
for someone tracking mortality's movements,
spending every night watching the ceiling as if
it were the sword of Damocles, so I sought younger faces
less sure of themselves to return my reflection. 

But however much I narrow my eyes
when the program pantomimes church, however
close it flies to the evangelical sun of my youth
that mangled my maladapted wings, in my “searching
and fearless moral inventory," I’m forced to admit
I'm here because Robert has what I want. 

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Chad Rutter is an emerging poet originally from rural Nebraska now residing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He received a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and an MFA from the University of Minnesota, both in visual art. His work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, Novus Literary Arts Journal, and Right Hand Pointing.


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