Nursery Rhymes for Modern Times
A told B and B told C, I’m shooting up school today at three. Chicka chicka boom boom, find the blindest corner in the room.
One fish, two fish, shots fired, don’t flinch. Sit silent in the dark fish. This one has a little scar. This one hears police cars.
I’m a little target, short and duck: head in your hands, knees in a tuck.
Llama llama lifetime trauma, little llama don’t you know, Mama always loves you so, even if not there when you go.
And so the boy cut down his class, and made a last stand, and bled away. And the greed was happy. But not really.
Goodnight bodies, goodnight room, goodnight young mouse, goodnight moon.
Look me in the eyes.
Well fine, I’ll try I can see the green corona blooming the brown: age Do I switch from eye to eye? Aim for somewhere in between, Where David’s stone snuck Under the nasal? Maybe no helmet big enough?
Look me in the eyes. Microdilatory difference left and right, ana… ana… anisocoria, slight. A narrowing of lids means suspicion? anger?
Look me in the eyes! Every periphery explodes: Still holding eyes but uneven mortar, buzzing 60 hertz lights, four pencils on the desk, and I shouldn’t be looking, and I’m not looking but everything’s there. I can’t… a glance away. A breath. And
LOOK ME IN THE EYES!! I, I, fine. Have you decided which? In Wiesentheid, K10, auf Englisch, nonverbal communication, the travel of eyes from eye to eye to mouth and back, and so I certainly can’t do that. But your eyes are, never mind.
You stopped. An answer? You were saying? Oh, that’s what you wanted? Sorry, I was looking you in the eyes.
Holy Week
1.
Who’d lift the curtain?
Not I,
for I know what I am
and what
I am
not:
I’d remain, forehead to the gilt floor
fogged with breath.
Yet there we’d prefer success,
a Tussauds to prostrate ourselves before
And bacchanalian
to frenzy as Dante renders them:
some shouting for vengeance,
prosecutors for time,
cameramen for tears,
and all for shame, for shame,
shame to name and laugh and point at.
Revenge, millstones? No.
For I know what I am
and what
I am
not.
Let those without fudged tax returns
or wayward thought
or hate
cast the first
tweet.
2.
I don’t like purple—Mother’s favorite.
But today it is liturgically appropriate
to match the paraments:
wine, bloodied, or royal.
I will not be smitten from the bench
if I wear it, not black,
mistake notes
at keys altarward,
not back, or lofted,
where I prefer.
I crawl on the strings,
kick the prop stick,
slam the lid atop myself:
strepitus without resurrection.
No postlude,
no warmth of a courtyard fire,
punishment for
attempts to say beyond my means:
For I know what I am
and what I am not—
and how not to wash feet,
but to rub them,
to calm nerves
always burning downstream
from her tangled, twisted spine.
3.
Is April the cruelest month, breeding?
Was Eliot’s spider was right?
The durée’s eddies swirl, and
we unknowingly weave
St. Matthew’s compelling current,
relentless march in minor.
From the mouths of children
glints of hope oppose but surpass not—
not yet; erst, aus Liebe
will mein Heiland sterben.
Aus Liebe: the curtain rent
that we need not kneel
waiting, wasting.
For I know
what
I am.
Naomi C. Gades can juggle up to four objects and teaches mostly first-year writing as an assistant professor at Frostburg State University. Her poetry has appeared in The Journal of the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning and the Against Absence project for the FSU Center for Literary Arts.