From BG with Love

From BG with Love
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Happy Valentine’s Day From BG with Love

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BG’s surprise gift with Keri, her favorite clerk

Since early May, BG has been my boon companion.  Through ice and snow, she has always been at my side as we travel to the 7 Eleven for her coffee refill. I love BG.

Well, it’s that time of the year. Imagine my surprise when on our last visit BG picked out a special Valentine’s Day card for me!  Of course, BG knows I have other human Valentines. For, of course, she has her own plastic suitors.  But paradise is to love many things with a passion.

To celebrate the occasion we are republishing (BELOW) A Boy and his BG: A Love Story (visual poem)

While there is an inter-text, a sub-text, a pre-text, a con-text, a meta-text and a vor-text behind, beneath, below, above, beyond and within the visual poem, these are not now worth revealing.  Besides, all “art” should stand alone on its own “merit.”

Some small background is necessary.  Last May I purchased a BIG GULP (a giant container in which refills are allowed) at one of the Seven Elevens on Monroe Avenue. As I didn’t need volumes of sugary soda, I asked the clerk if I could refill with coffee.  After consultation, it was determined refills could be made with ANY liquid — at the price of $1.61!

Incidentally, no other Seven Eleven honors this same promise. And when I see someone from “corporate” skulking the store, I do shy away from a coffee refill that day. Nonetheless, I am firmly convinced I am the only person in Rochester who “java reboots” the Big Gulp.  (More on the debate 7 Eleven Corporate.)

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Photo: d.t.

Since then, I have repeatedly accepted the offer, now having made friends with the clerks used to my BG toting entrance maybe a hundred times.  As well with city workers at nearby Cobb’s Hill with whom some early mornings I have shared my more than ample coffee.  So, while BG may possibly be an unwilling subject in the visual poem — she’s yet to tell me one way or the other — she has performed some useful public service.

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Photo: Veronica Morgan of Sterling Photography

Also quite possibly the visual poem was influenced by just a little too much nearly free coffee.

Oh, you also met BG  in Diehards and the Cobb’s Hill Tennis Courts

And in Yoga on and off the mat with Mel Thomas

And in Love and Hope in the Rochester Subway

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A Boy and his BG: A Love Story (visual poem)

Rainout -- No game! (1)

Rainout — No game! (1)

Rain Out -- No game 2

Rain Out — No game (2)

A terrible accident!

A terrible accident!

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Trapped under the bridge!

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To the rescue!

Saved!

Saved!

Not really BG's style

Not really BG’s style

BG makes a new friend

BG makes a new friend

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A star is born!

BG getting filled

BG getting filled

BG getting paid for

BG getting paid for [even in love money changes hands]

True love at Lake Riley!

True love at Lake Riley!

The Cobb’s Hill tragedy of an “invisible man” ten years later

https://talkerofthetown.com/2015/09/27/is-there-a-poem-in-this-tragedy/

Love and Hope in the Rochester Subway

About The Author

dkramer3@naz.edu

Welcome to Talker of the Town! My name is David Kramer. I have a Ph.D in English and teach at Keuka College. I am a former and still active Fellow at the Nazareth College Center for Public History and a Storyteller in Residence at the SmallMatters Institute. Over the years, I have taught at Monroe Community College, the Rochester Institute of Technology and St. John Fisher College. I have published numerous Guest Essays, Letters, Book Reviews and Opinion pieces in The New York Times, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Buffalo News, the Rochester Patriot, the Providence Journal, the Providence Business News, the Brown Alumni Magazine, the New London Day, the Boston Herald, the Messenger Post Newspapers, the Wedge, the Empty Closet, the CITY, Lake Affect Magazine and Brighton Connections. My poetry appears in The Criterion: An International Journal in English and Rundenalia and my academic writing in War, Literature and the Arts and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Starting in February 2013, I wrote for three Democratic and Chronicle  blogs, "Make City Schools Better," "Unite Rochester," and the "Editorial Board." When my tenure at the D & C  ended, I wanted to continue conversations first begun there. And start new ones.  So we created this new space, Talker of the Town, where all are invited to join. I don’t like to say these posts are “mine.” Very few of them are the sole product of my sometimes overheated imagination. Instead, I call them partnerships and collaborations. Or as they say in education, “peer group work.” Talker of the Town might better be Talkers of the Town. The blog won’t thrive without your leads, text, pictures, ideas, facebook shares, tweets, comments and criticisms.

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