| Jul. 5th, 2009 @ 05:44 pm 549: The Ides of Amer-I-Can |
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“The Ides of Amer-I-Can” Kevin McFadden
O tempora! O mores! —Cicero I write in times of plus and minus, in decades of division. I write in times when what's said aloud is sometimes not allowed said. The brain's in halves, the heart's in half-knots. In times when pronouns take the place of nouns and proverbs take the place of thought. Times of humanity's peak-ruts: assaults on clear new summits (and summits on nuclear assault). When the Air Force aims high and diplomacy dips low. I write in times when ink seems obsolete, pens dead. I write on a computer whose newspaper-named fonts beg outrageous multiplication. I write in Times. Her T-shirt exclaims NF! and this is America all right, that said it, NF is enough, and yeah, it's clever, but lacks a clear referent: of what? She's dressed kinda feminist so maybe that's her beef: NF of this crap, NF of the way you bastards look at me—basta bastardi! for those of you who ogle in Italian— NF sentences and sentiments like "She's dressed kinda feminist," NF ineffables, let's try saying something useful. The N is on her right breast, the F the left. I visibly introduce myself to N. She verbally introduces me to "F— you." My grandpa used to say as we'd drive the backroads, "Never forget, son, American ends in I-can," giving me a license before I needed it. I'd perch on his lap to steer, he'd shift and work the pedals; hey, it really looked like the world was racing for me. Never swerved toward, "But, Grandpa, so does Mex-ican—and where did that get them?" Where would that put me? Agree with grandpa and drive—dissent, boy, gets you nowhere. Took years to see the bugs in the grill, the Sunday roadkill half-dressed in a ditch, before grasping the unspoken right-of-way. Amer-I-can, really. One possum better off dead. We've clocked the sneeze doing 90. In seconds, it can work a room. My wife seizes up and lets hers go in two iambic bursts. (It's cute, it's cute.) Our sneezes, we know, are ours for life, however accomplished: my solid hoot, her teensy twos, the three or more (I'm guessing) you're doomed to repeat— just reflex. By history, then, do we mean we want nothing to sneeze at? Jamestown to James Brown in a few hundred blinks, Plato to NATO in the space to sneeze. Is it me, dear wife, or is the world looking less like a "Man's Man's Man's World?" Itsyou, she doubles up, itsyou. Today even blood can kill, I can tell through a bag marked BIOHAZARD. Doc says my back is bad, recommends more foam in the sole ("With these shoes you hardly feel the earth"). Nothing's touching, I notice around the sterilized office: tray here, pads there, swabs over some. Gloves between me and my healer, paper between me and the seat, latex between lovers, what's it coming to? Expanse's expense is a distance you can learn from any pre-packaged fork in the hospital café, eating in our cultural fashion, with middlemen, no fingers. Clean utensils for hands who knows what's on. |
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