Mason Broadwell
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Flying to Los Alamos
When you look out of your window and notice that both left engines
are on fire at 30,000 feet on the red-eye to Los Alamos, you'll have
to decide: should you unlock the seat-cushion-cum-flotation-device
on the off-chance you land in the Abiquiu Reservoir, or should you
just eat your Red Hots and pretend you haven't noticed? And what
will you think about to distract yourself? It's like when you board the
campus bus and see an old lover, and you both desperately refuse to
open your eyes. It's like watching Top Hat but humming How Could
You Believe Me When I Said I Love You When You Know I've Been
a Liar All My Life. It's like the sleepover where Ashley forgot her
underwear and all you could talk about was alligators. It’s like Batman.
It's like Sunday afternoons eating Red Hots in your granddad's 1975
Mercedes on the way to Piccadilly. It's like the relationship that ended
when she said "I always knew you'd be the one to break up with me"—
by which she meant "Nobody else would have the balls to treat me
like that"—by which she meant you found it endlessly fascinating that
her breasts were different sizes—by which she meant "What happens
next?"—by which she meant "I don't have a car"—by which she meant
"You'll have to give me a ride home"—by which she meant "I never
want to see you again"—by which she meant "We'll probably transfer
to the same school next year, won't we?"—by which she meant "In
the event we run into each other on campus, let's pretend we're blind
to the curves of our bodies"—by which she meant pin-up girls will
always remind you of her. And you're pretty sure that's why it's like
the day the glass-front snack machine broke during lunch in 11th grade
and all you could grab in the furious silent scrum that followed was
a roll of breath mints that tasted like dollar-store shampoo. And it's like
the ice on the sharpest edge of winter. It's like sludge tankers silently
crushing fishing boats in the night. It's like that magic trick involving a
nun, a salt-cellar, and a nipple ring. It's like chlamydia. It's like the ski
trip when you smashed into a tree, and while your family laughed and
shivered unknowingly at the bottom of the slope, you slipped away
soullessly and soon. In that sense, it's like the summer you did all the
hardest things you could think of, and the resulting glories of the autumn.
And ultimately it's like those placards on airplane tray-tables that read
In the event of an emergency, your seat cushion may be used as a
flotation device. In the event of spiritual emptiness, gamble, eat Swiss
Cake rolls, read Descartes, sing a song of sex pants, learn to die,
and bury yourself for 100 years or more. And you'll agree that all of
these were okay distractions when you gave yourself second-degree
burns on your forearm with a cappuccino machine, but in the event,
it wasn't okay after she got off the bus and your eyesight returned. In
the event you rise from the flaming dead, as you will do, substitute
a plane trip to a city you've never visited. And in the event you glance
out the window at 30,000 feet and notice that the engines are on fire,
eat a Red Hot or two and close your eyes.
Notes on the Poem You Are Reading
This is the end of the poem. This is the part where, through frabjous
wordplay and a quotation from The Lives and Time of Shirley Mason,
I create the illusion of having planned to end so glibly. Here there be
moralizing. Here there be eulogizing. Here there be sex. Here there
and everywhere be recycled eloquence in behalf of you, beloved.
Here there be drag-on lame puns as parables for what I have not
found the grace to say in the lines to come. Here there be solutions
to all our metaphors. Here there be leather and dancing. Here the
water and wood and calamity. Hear the difference?
This is the part
I wrote while we were asleep on a borrowed inflatable couch, or
after we tried and failed to love each other and pretended to be so.
At this point I put the last flourishes on the sexy blacksmithing
scenes that have doubtless kept your eyeballs only nominally un-
bugged. Now a list of all the lawn gnomes I have violated. Now a
diatribe on the deplorable state of my metonymy, my dating patterns,
my gas mileage, and my excrement. Now a jaunt or four, or for four,
or in a four-by-four: I forget. Now a beagle trees a pre-millenialist
and vows to stay under his feet until Shiloh comes. Now a series
of hasty tropes with no narrative value—these to illustrate my
competency in literary poetry. Hence also this quote from Virgil,
and hence we endure the present and watch for better things.
And
fear not disorder in the poem: my sheep will be gathered up by
the Shepherd at the end of all times, and anyway it never troubles
the wolf how many sheep there may be. In other words, get out there
and bite people indiscriminately! This is the part of the poem where
I say that. This is also the part of the poem where my metaphor is
extended, and overextended, and develops tendonitis. And this is
the part where I recycle several less-than-face-imploding lines I
wrote in high school.
I dreamed; and in my dream I waited/for you
on your wedding day—and though/I would rather hear the tabor and
the pipe,/it is not my lot to shave my beard, sprinkle/sugar on dainties,
chase the ring through/Elysium’s bosom as the curlew calls, wake/to
enchantments of kisses, sit in a pew/waiting for any bride but another’s,
swear/to do till death does, or stand on a fence-post/shouting bliss to a
shocked and sweetened/and destroying world—thus I waited there/to
kiss you farewell, and to savor a final/breath of your inescapability,
and to pray/my dreams would stop; and woke afraid.
Now the part
where you say, “Hey! He just copied 14 lines from a crappy old poem!
I didn’t think he’d really do that. And they were really bad!” But now
the part where you stop and grudgingly admire my poetic integrity for
admitting the feelings I have for you. Now the part where you notice
that my chronology is off and that I can’t bend space-time as I alleged.
Or the part where you notice that in this stanza I’ve got you bent over
the anvil with the bellows in your anus. And thus we come to the part
where you question the value of reading this poem, but since you’re
nearly through you try to make yourself enjoy the touch of cold iron
and enema—though you can’t help remembering that line in Homer:
If I hear one more word, Bart doesn’t get to watch cartoons and Lisa
doesn’t get to go to college.
A fancier Homer said, Be still, my
heart; thou hast known worse than this. Because this is the part of
the poem where you have to decide if that opening grabbed your
eyelashes seductively enough to make you read it all.
So here I
introduce you to the world, beloved, by relating the story in which
we galumphed into a strip club by mistake, and then spoke only
words invented by Lewis Carroll until they let us out again. No,
seriously. And here I introduce the insoluble metaphor. Here I
declare that my poem shall smell of clover and slant rhyme. Here
I engage the muses, only to abandon them at the altar to elope
with you. And here I open the poem with any of the following
clichés: There are many things that… Pardon me, have you any…
Once upon a time I… I will sing a song of my beloved… Hello,
Hansom (also called “Hey Taxi”)… What’s love got to do, got
to do… Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote… This is my
attempt to write a poem… This is the beginning of the poem.
Bio
Mason Broadwell is pursuing an MA in Rhetoric and Composition at Western Kentucky University, and teaching composition. He won the 2010 Browning Literary Club Award.