Copihue Poetry

My best carnival trick is noticing the elephant
in the room in whatever room I’m in, feeling
the weight of the expectations or taboos,
as they shift depending on the audience or
type of big top tent. James Joyce said to pay
attention to the small things, given the absurdity
and brevity of all the other things, so Gould took
that to mean dinosaurs, and it didn’t bother him
that most people who ever lived never knew
that dinosaurs ever even existed. What bothers
you that others don’t even know about? Yes,
take that both ways it’s meant, both in the sense
of what’s bothering you that you simply can’t
ever share AND what’s bothering you that
others aren’t even aware of? The thingness
of the thing, and you’re right, there’s probably
at least a third meaning that no one on the planet
has yet discovered. Have you yet allowed yourself
to consider the short- and long-term benefits of
seeing a therapist? Have you yet discovered
the absolute immensity of the work it takes
to get others to care? And when you really want
something, you rub the lamp furiously, but
the more furiously you rub the lamp,
the smaller the genie appears to be.
So we keep saying, if I can just make it
to the next paycheck, the weekend, heck
the way things are going, if I can just make it
to 5 o’clock, I’m going to reward myself with
a cocktail and deep fried appetizers. Hey Pal,
says the surly patron at the bar’s end, and he
definitely looks worse for wear, in his smoky
five o’clock shadow, but he’s also somehow
made it to 5 o’clock, and you want
to tell him that and to call you Bert because
you heard that Herbert Hoover’s closest pals
called him Bert, but then he might think that

you’re being too Sesame Street, but you’re not,
you’re really being earnest, and you want to say,
Look friend, like Bert’s Great Depression,
I am taking too much heat, or I am giving myself
too much heat for what are clearly extenuating
global conditions, from this economy to the peace
treaty that didn’t work out as planned, reparations
causing resentment and instability rather than
the accountability they were meant to provide.
Weather is daily changing. Climate is more
progressive and longer term, but both have

a bearing on the moods we’re in, and somewhere-
everywhere, something-everything is on fire,

but sure, it’s fine for today, for right now, if
you go ahead and open up to a stranger, yes,
yes it is yes it is yes it is, and still yes it is.

 

 

Inspired by Ulysses by James Joyce (1922), Dinosaur in a Haystack by Stephen Jay Gould (1995), and Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times by Kenneth Whyte (2017).

First published in Metachrosis Literary Magazine (Ireland).