Love Poem

Justin Brouckaert Visiting Author

Justin Brouckaert received his bachelor of arts in English from SVSU in 2013, and he earned his master of fine arts in fiction from the University of South Carolina, where he was a James Dickey Fellow and the editor of Yemassee. During his time at SVSU, Justin was a Writing Center tutor, a Roberts Fellow, andeditor-in-chief of The Valley Vanguard. Aformerrecipient ofSVSU’sSeitz Creative Writing Scholarship, Justin visited SVSU in Winter 2022 to talk with the newest class of Roberts Fellows and members of Forever Red.

Justin now lives in Ferndale, Michigan, where he works as a literary agent for the New York-based agency Aevitas Creative Management, representing journalists, thought leaders, and literary novelists. He is the author of the short story collection Love Stories (Long Day Press, 2021) and a monthly newsletter called SUBLURBIA.

Of course the mountain climber has considered death. Well, he asks in his affectless way, have you? And the answer is no, not really, not in the “so-many-feet-inthe-air-without-ropes” sort of way. Not in the “by-the-time-your-lover-wakesyou’ll-either-have-fallen-to-your-death-or-not” sort of way. The mountain climber jokes, It will probably be the worst four seconds of my life. Imagine that giving yourself so wholly to a rock that has spent centuries repelling everything soft that bothers. Yes, you can wear grooves into rock but you can wear grooves into anything. There are people in this world who will buy a certain type of couch for you. They will hang your favorite picture, they will get up on their tippy-toes. A favorite color, a spontaneous song, a reliable Sunday mood. These burdens will echo one second, two seconds, three seconds, four long after the soft explosion. The mountain climber is the ideal partner because what could he possibly expect? The mountain climber says, If I had any obligation to maximize my lifespan. It takes a special type of person to envy fingertip strength. To press your thumb into a crimp the size of a quarter, arch your toes against slight gradations in the texture of the rock and trust the pose. There are places, the mountain climber says, where your hands can’t hold you. Up there, where it’s only God, silence, a map memorized by feel. Up there, where the greatest asset is your capacity for unrequited intimacy, to accept as a tender embrace the scrape of chalky knuckles wedged into a crack somehow both thin and cavernous, the full weight of a body on the hinge that is your wrist. What the mountain climber likes best, one suspects, what he works toward for all those thousands of hours, what he lusts for and ultimately achieves, is to feel almost entirely disconnected from the rock, suspended in air, alone. And then, to reach up.