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Jack Powers

ROB SMUNIEWSKI IS DEAD

Dead at 18. Hit by an 84-year-old driving a 20-year-old Honda.
Rob Smuniewski, whose engine revved higher than any of ours, dead.
Who wrote “I love redheads” on his desk, on his locker,
who stood on a table in the cafeteria and asked a redhead to the prom,
who jumped down and danced out of the room shaking his head
              when she said no,
who wrote a love poem to redheads from a list of favorite words
              (ginger, auburn, strawberry,
freakin’ and one I said he couldn’t use in school) which ended “the only
              way to tell
if the drapes match the rug is to see the—and that’s the word you said
              I can’t use!”
Who loved his quad, broken down on that January night.
Rob Smuniewski, who must have flown in the air like the deer I hit last
              winter in Maine
shot out of the darkness, eyes as wide as mine, both helpless to stop
              the sudden collision.
Rob, who danced more than walked, dead. Rob, who called the ladies
              “Dawl”
and the men “Coach,” always neat in khakis, oxford shirts—argyle vests
              and ties
for game days—who told his sister, “I don’t go to school to learn;
I go to entertain.” Who taught me never to ask, “Any questions?” in class
when he said, “Yeah. I have two. How come my nose always gets sunburned
              first
no matter what I do. Look! I look like freakin’ Rudolph! And another thing!
When you wear a robe around the house you’re supposed to feel manly. I
              feel like a woman.
What’s with that?” Rob freakin’ Smuniewski. Dead. Who you knew, even
              when you wanted
to strangle him, couldn’t find his own off switch any more than you could,
              who would
apologize later and say, “You the man, Coach.” Who, when he launched into
the frosty air, might have waved to the fear-stricken driver, might have
              thought this will make a great story,
might have thought as I did when Cam rolled her old Volvo thirty years ago
              in Vermont
as the black pavement rose to meet my passenger window, “So this is how it
              freakin’ ends.”

–from Rattle #36, Winter 2011

§ One Response to “Rob Smuniewski Is Dead” by Jack Powers

• Jan says:

  August 8, 2012 at 8:01 am

  Thank you, Jack. My father died in similar circumstances. I never thought of it this way… of his last moment. You have stirred my thinking about him… and of Rob.

  Reply