If I were you I’d get an unlisted number
then think about growing up, just a little.
—John Ashbery
We all make presumptions. Sometimes
it’s presumptuous not to. At this point,
a total stranger, and hopefully not, but
quite possibly, the person known more
than just rhetorically as your emergency
contact, twists his spine, inverts his fingers,
stretches his leg out absolutely horizontal to
the floor, bobbles his head a bit in preparation
for a jerk to the left and a jerk to the right,
each jerk has his face ninety degrees at odds
with his pre-twisted spine, all to the hoopla
of a six year old attacking a slab of bubble
wrap that fits atop the entire living room
floor. Pop-poppity-pops that cruise swiftly
into a flourish of rattatat-tats and then into
a crescendo of rolled r’s that last about as
long as the movie credits. Oh, him? He’s
not a bad habit fomenting at the tip of your
tongue. Nah. He’s that frothing case of
human rabies that sweeps you off your feet,
and then deposits you in the gutter during the
splendor of a springtime storm. And the thunder
claps make way for that particular downpour
of what he likes to call “nutcracking hail-balls.”
