David Kirby
Silly Kids
Kids like to run and skip—walking’s not fancy enough
for them! Walking’s vanilla. Kids don’t like vanilla,
they like mint chocolate chip, rocky road, raspberry ripple,
cookies and cream. And then something happens.
A friend tells me her daughter was crying last night
because she wants to give away the stuffed animals
she’s had since kindergarten; she’s older now, she says,
and she doesn’t know how to play with them any more.
What happens to that power of imagination? You lose it,
sure, but it deepens later, gets better. A neighbor’s child
was sitting in her front yard this morning at a table stacked
high with all sorts of knickknacks and a sign that says,
“School supplies sold here and nail salon and make-up.”
She’s thirty-six. Kidding! Just kidding. She’s a kid, too,
and, like all kids, thinks big. Boundaries, barriers, borders,
limits, lines: who needs them? If you love school supplies,
love crayons, scissors, pencils, paints, markers, sharpeners,
and glue sticks, and who doesn’t, why not stock them
right there next to the files, brushes, buffers, nippers,
clippers, cuticle exfoliators, and such other items as might
be required by your licensed nail technician who just
happens to be not only willing but thrilled to throw a few
pens, pocket folders, and hole punchers into the bargain.
One of my nephews wants to be an astronaut and fly
to Mars when he grows up but also own a 7-Eleven
so he can have as many grape slurpees as he wants
whenever he wants them, though the odds are that
he’ll do neither of those things but something he hasn’t
thought of yet and won’t for years. Marianne Moore
loved animals and athletes because they mind
their own business: “Pangolins, hornbills, pitchers,
catchers, do not pry or prey or prolong the conversation,
do not make us self-conscious, look their best when
caring least.” In Stanley Elkin’s novel Boswell,
the main character goes to his son’s sixth-grade science fair
where he sees a spaceship, a water-processing plant, a robot.
And then he gets to his son’s entry: two raisins, a paper
clip, a wad of toilet tissue, a dead fly, and a scrap
of paper on which the boy has written “grbge dunpf.”
Look at that silly kid. You were him. Look at you now.
Always Something
I’m in the airport at the moment, sitting across from a guy
who is glaring at me as though I’ve committed some offense
of which only he knows, since I’ve done little more than
take my seat across the way and gaze about with what
I’d like think is a pleasant and inoffensive expression,
one that contrasts distinctly with that of the guy whose glare
actually seems to be intensifying, now that I think about it,
as though I’d questioned his parentage or said something
defamatory about his favorite political candidate or sports team.
Karl Popper said, "It is impossible to speak in such a way
that you cannot be misunderstood,” but I haven’t even
said anything yet! Then again, you can always insult someone
without uttering a single word: during the Turkish siege
of Vienna in 1683, legend has it that a baker working late
at night heard the Turks tunneling under the walls of the city
and alerted the military, who collapsed the tunnel, thus
eliminating the threat and saving the city. To commemorate
the occasion, the baker baked a crescent-shaped pastry
in the shape of the Turks’ emblem, the crescent moon,
and thus was born the croissant which permitted
a famished Austrian to satiate his early-morning appetite
but also devour a symbol of Turkish culture. Oh, kick a guy
when he’s down, will you? Or a bunch of guys, or an entire nation.
There was a letter in the “Dear Abby” advice column today
in which a woman said that her husband, Alex, doesn’t like Roy,
the husband of her friend Darlene, because he thinks Roy
is obnoxious, to which Darlene took umbrage, saying Roy is
a great person and Alex should apologize, whereupon Dear Abby
replied that, while the writer and Alex shouldn’t be
guilt-tripped into spending time with Darlene and Roy,
Alex shouldn’t have said Roy is obnoxious, at which point
I realized I didn’t know what the word “obnoxious” meant,
so I looked it up. Did you know that “obnoxious” not only
has two meanings but that those meanings are the total
opposites of one another? “Obnoxious” derives from
Latin “ob” (or “to,” “toward”) and “noxa” (or “injury,”
“hurt”), which, combined, mean "subject to something harmful”
and “exposed to injury,” or at least that’s what it meant
back in the 1590s. But by the 1670s, people forgot
the “ob” part and just started using “obnoxious” the way
they used “noxious,” that is, to mean "offensive, hateful,
highly objectionable.” Maybe Alex was looking out for Roy!
I bet Alex was a Latin scholar and was using that word
in the old-fashioned way. Boy, people were really stupid
in the 1670s, weren’t they? Anybody can be stupid,
though. My Nigerian student Dami says that if you are
from his country and speak English, people will think
you are smart, even if you aren’t. Same here, Dami!
I bet Roy was exposed to injury and didn’t know it,
and Alex was being a good guy and trying to protect
Roy from some pending catastrophe that only he, Alex,
was aware of, which is all very fine and useful,
I’m so sure, only here in the airport, the guy sitting
across from me is still glaring at me
as though he’s about to tell me to step outside and say that.
GumElvis
The room where I write backs onto a busy street
bordered by a sidewalk, so all day long I hear people
talking—on their phones, to their companions
or just themselves—and right now I’m listening to a boy
saying something to his mother that she doesn’t like,
because even though I can’t make out his words,
I can tell from his tone that they are disrespectful,
a guess which is confirmed when the mother shouts
You keep that up and I’m gonna tear your ass
to pieces! and suddenly I’m four years old
and my mother is hosting a garden party, meaning
that the ladies from her garden club are wearing
their big hats and flowery frocks and sipping tea
and nibbling finger sandwiches and cookies
as they eye and sniff and effusively compliment
my mother’s roses, jonquils, day lilies while I,
who am invisible in the shadow of the hedge,
fill my lungs with air and cry I’m a 100 million
jackasses and stinkpots! over and over again
because my brother, who is eight, has told me to.
My mother boils away from the other ladies
just long enough to yank me from my hiding place
so she can wear me out, which was her version
of tear your ass to pieces, though even as she
raises her arm to strike, it must occur to her
that the sound of a child howling in pain as his mother
wears him out will appear even more unseemly
to her guests than her younger child’s assertion
that he is 100 million jackasses and stinkpots.
Even a four-year-old knows what a jackass is,
but why 100 million of them, and what, exactly,
is a stinkpot? One definition says that it is a type
of turtle capable of producing an unpleasant smell,
certainly an accurate description of your average
four-year-old boy, particularly one who spends much
of his time outdoors in the Louisiana humidity.
Who are we, really? The last time I splashed around
in a hotel hot tub, I was joined not long after
by a middle schooler, I’d say, with questionable orthodontia
and a worse complexion, yet he fixed a scowl on me
for so long a time period that after a while I felt
as though I’d done something wrong, though
I didn’t know what it was. He got out after
a while and took the first steps toward a life
he’d enjoy with straight teeth and clear skin
and become successful and travel himself
and end up in a hotel hot tub somewhere
being scowled at by a twelve- or thirteen-year-old
who hasn’t even been born yet as I sat there still,
wondering if maybe I’m not the hotshot I thought
I was up to that moment, not the gift to humanity
in his own mind that GumElvis is, that being
the name I’ve given to the guy at my gym
who chews his jawful of Juicy Fruit so loudly that
the other gym members scowl at him, especially
the women, and he combs up his tresses into
a towering pompadour, having previously dyed them
a shoe-polish black, and even sneers the way
the King did and has alienated himself from
the more serious lifters not only by cracking his gum
just when someone is trying for a personal best
on the bench or the squat rack but also,
instead of observing strict form, by performing
sloppy repetitions with far too much weight
and far too many grunts! and yeahs! of the type
Elvis voiced during his karate-chop period
and in that way failing to have any effect at all
on his own physique, which remains slack
and pudgy. Loves that gum, though. Oh, to enjoy
the self of steam of a GumElvis! Not for him
the doubt that plagues the rest of us. Not for
GumElvis the alternating self-love and shame
of the man who confessed to Dear Abby
that his wife found it “weird” that he liked
to wear panties and bras under his business suits.
Wonder what kind of childhood that guy had—
GumElvis, too. The man says he has tried
to suppress his desire to wear lingerie
in what will almost certainly be a futile attempt
to keep his marriage together, though at least
he has found some solace in telling the women
at the lingerie stores he frequents “that what
I am buying is for me, and I delight in the fact
that they are accepting and that they help me
find items that I like.” I’m with him.
David Kirby teaches at Florida State University. His latest books are a poetry collection, Help Me, Information, and a textbook modestly entitled The Knowledge: Where Poems Come From and How to Write Them. Kirby is also the author of Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll, which the Times Literary Supplement described as “a hymn of praise to the emancipatory power of nonsense.” He is currently on the editorial board of Alice James Books.
