Submission Sixty-One

I was born ugly. The soot and dew of a wash away city like Seattle-

stained my forhead.

Years would come and go



in and out, the doors revolving like a bandsaw alphabet

it was hard to hold on,



i did not speak the same language as the others,

my mouth was broke as porcelain



i spoke deft kitchen table philosophy



the kind spoken with father after he's got a few glasses in

I asked questions-

questions about

oceans, phylums, genus's,

about movies, about

sunken eyes, do they disinigrate like shipwrecks?



we spoke in incomplete's,

in predicates, I stuttered

I rapture dyslexic

Homonym prophetic selective

etiquette, where stars dad come from?

where did the teachers lose me?



clearly my kitchen talk

philosophy was like looking at the alphabet barely

eaten and wasted, bloodied and

meat still at the bones



so they force fed me more

I entered rooms with no doors



with big clumsy computers yelling robotic english lessons at me

the teachers stood behind,

the world stood behind me,

with gun and stop watch

as i typed the sentences

"Marie walks to the park, with her dog

Marie wlaks to teh prk--her dog with

////////////////////////

Marie ash walked, her dog with park

Marie

Marie has

Marie dgo park and walked

Marie

park

--and what they didn't know

was that when i went home

to schizophrenic times tables

that spoke backwards and with a hiss

and i read their books

practiced their equations

Dug a grave with the syllables

-I spoke pretty for a society of ghosts

I held that pen in my mouth like Hamlet held Yorick

Am I Am I am I am I am I am I am I?

i spoke like a gun contemplating its bullets birth

the ears bless(ed) and will be, I told my father we are

what we are what we are

I said I am I am

i told everyone who would listen

I am! I not them? REad, yes, write, math arithmetic

But no one ever asked me

the right questions

I made sure to ask my father

all of them

why

why this earth? my mouht?

this school? this empty notebook? what happens to the words when in the air?

are they lost before crash landing on another's ear?

Do i talk funny because my words are in fightdogs fightdogs

fightdogs I mean I mean I mean

why is the air heavy?

consuming?

Do words die?

Do words die?

Then where do they live?

.

~Andrew Pine