#filed under queue

The chair has arms. The clock, a face. The kites have long and twirly tails. The tacks have heads. The books have spines. The toolbox has a set of nails. Our shoes have tongues, the marbles, eyes. The wooden desk has legs and seat. The cups have lips. My watch has hands. The classroom rulers all have feet. Heads, arms hands, nails, spines, legs, feet, tails, face, lips, tongues, eyes. What a surprise! Is our classroom alive?

Night, a street, a lamp, a chemist’s shop, a meaningless and dim light. Even if you live for another quarter of a century, everything will be like this. There is no way out.         You will die—and start all over again, and everything will be repeated, as of old: the night, the icy ripples on the canal, the chemist’s shop, the street, the lamp.

The scruffy house cat aches to fly— she dreams all day of wings and sky! So tonight she climbs the ladder, mounts a platform, nothing matters except to catch a thin trapeze then hold on tight with grace and ease. She swings herself by both front paws then somesaults to wild applause of kitchen mice, who, though dizzy, encourage Cat, to keep her busy.

Editor’s note: This is part of Adcox’s ‘Scientific Method’ series of poems, which are all titled exactly the same. I’ve added “ocean” to this one’s title to help differentiate it.

-

When people ask how, I say a fire took them. And then they look at me like I'm the most pitiful thing in the world. So sometimes I just shrug and say They just died, that's all. A fire took their bodies. That's all. I can still feel their voices and hugs and laughing. Sometimes. Sometimes I can hear my daddy calling my name. Lonnie sometimes. And sometimes Locomotion come on over here a minute. I want to show you something. And then I see his big hands holding something out to me. It used to be the four of us. At night we went to sleep. In the morning we woke up and ate breakfast. Daddy worked for Con Edison. You ever saw him? Climbing out of a manhole? Yellow tape keeping the cars from coming down the block. An orange sign that said Men Working. I still got his hat. It's light blue with CON EDISON in white letters. Mama was a receptionist. When you called the office where she worked, she answered the phone like this Graftman Paper Products, how may I help you? It was her work voice. And when you said something like Ma, it's me. her voice went back to normal. To our mama's voice Hey Sugar. You behaving? Is the door locked? That stupid fire couldn't take all of them. Nothing could do that. Nothing.

-