from Verbatim

 
#26  
                                                               
He:  So what’s that       
     you’re reading?

She: Joyce.
He:  Joyce who???


#31
 
He: Trust me. This actually happened.
It was in The New York Times!

She: What’s that? Some kind of book or something?


#56

She: I read where global warming is actually good for the caribou; now they      
     can eat vegetation that used to be covered with ice.

He: The caribou. They’re, like…Eskimos?
 
 
#71
 
She: You don’t do nothin’ but sit in front of that t.v. all day like a god-damned prince.
 
He: I’m not a god-damned prince.
 
She: Y’can say that again!
 
 
#102

He: You’re wrong. Lots of people don’t have last names: Madonna, Prince,
    Cher….

She: I’m telling you, he had a last name: Bonaparte…Napoleon Bonaparte.

He: Here’s your Bonerpart…right here.


 
#153
 
She: I can’t stand it. You’re so into yourself right now.
 
He: No I’m not. I’m so into you.
 
She: You wish.
 
 
#161
 
He: Oh, c’mon. Cut her some slack. She can be really funny.
 
She: I know. But not “Ha Ha” funny.
 
 
# 175
 
He: Hey, look. You knew what you were getting when you married me.
 
She: I wouldn’t go that far.
 

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George J. Searles teaches English and Latin at MVCC and has also taught creative writing for Pratt and graduate courses for The New School. A widely-published literary critic, textbook author, and poet, he is a former Carnegie Foundation NYS “Professor of the Year.” He writes that the poems in his manuscript Verbatim are snippets of actual conversation he has overheard.