Adam "Dance Pants" Boehmer

It's moving time in Ann Arbor, or at least the beginning of it. Folks are moving in or out all over the place in anticipation for the new school year. One thing this moving frenzy brings about is a proliferation of free stuff often left right next to the sidewalk. It's like a garage sale only there's no garage, there's nothing for sale, and there isn't anyone sitting in a lawn chair watching you look over their castaways.

While in Ann Arbor yesterday helping my friend Jane move from one flat to another I happened upon a selection of free items right across from her old house. There was a man standing there, slender in jeans and a blue t-shirt holding a retro painting of an owl. I strolled over and complemented him on his find. He turned to me and said thank you. We may have said something more about owls. Then he said, "I think I know you. Is your name D'Anne?" He told me his name was Adam Boehmer and said he and I both were in a workshop with Mary Jo Firth Gillett through Metro Detroit Writers several years ago. I did not recognize him at all. He was wearing sunglasses and had an ample beard, but even after he took the glasses off I was still drawing a blank. Then he told me that not only have we met before, but that he and I were both in the 2005 issue of Gertrude. I had no recollection of this, either. Then Jane came over to the discard pile and it turned out that Adam and Jane were friends and that Adam is friends with Megan Levad and other people I know and like in Ann Arbor.

As promised I went home and looked him up in that issue of Gertrude and his stuff is really good. The University of Michigan MFA program needs to snatch him up right quick.

The Race
They gallop
around the corner,
naked torsos showing first fuzz,
some more than others.

Mouths agape,
they inhale the same air I do,
rapacious, relishing the windy race.

And at first,
I look, but al I allowed to look?
I am, to them, an old man.

But these labrador boys keep panting,
eyes saying, go on.

Somewhere, their mothers pray against me.
And sometimes, I do too.

(Adam K Boehmer, from the 2005 issue of Gertrude.)

Oh, he also won the 2008 Current poetry contest.

And he's quite the dancer.