Daniel Simpson
WHEN WE WERE FOUR
and my twin brother and I got to jumping
on our twin mattresses,
which had lain in boredom on their wooden frames,
we put our agitators in overdrive,
turned our beds into washing machines.
Steam climbed up the wall behind our headboards.
It's hard work shaking the footboard
fast enough to spin-dry a full load.
We seem to have been the first in Berwyn, Pennsylvania
to discover you could do this.
Grampappy Armstrong just clicked his tongue.
Were we the work of the devil?
I told myself I was not afraid of the devil,
but my fear of the devil tasted like horseradish,
and my shame like the smell of sour milk
.
Down the street lived a dog named Satan
who used to shit in our front yard,
and every time my Welsh grandmother said iechyd da
right after the grace, it would make me laugh.
Danny Boy could laugh at anything.
We were as quiet as squirrels.
We couldn't sit still at the table
because we had plastic plates and cups
and our chairs had their backs to the wall.
"Father had the Shipfitter blues," we bellowed
as the sharp needle of innocence
played through the old 78 of evening
and we trampolined into the limbs of old oaks,
bouncing harder and higher each time,
hoping to stave off night and the ghost of the puppy
who had once fallen through our wild arms.
Venez, vivez avec nous, said the leaves,
promising that stars would bathe us and the sun would dress us.
Gutten nacht, said shirts from a laundry basket,
and the bed slept, holding hands with the water pipes.
* * *
ALMOST DROWNING
Language left me.
Prepositions went first
when the surprised lungs
were asked to act like gills.
Adverbs and adjectives followed
as gravity toyed with me,
drawing me deeper,
letting go later each time
like an experienced seductress.
I flailed my way up for air,
for a split-second chance to sputter
out something that might save my life,
something my brother and friends might hear
in the far-away world of rope and buoy,
something to make the lifeguard remember
one Crab had moved up to Frog.
Down and down I went,
into silent darkness, without nouns,
mud sucking at my heels,
seaweed holding on,
arms heavy, so much work
left for the verbs to do—
to kick, to thrash.
Then, everything fell away,
until an I
seemed all there was.
Daniel Simpson currently serves as Access Support Specialist for the Library of
Congress's Braille and "talking book" download service. His work has appeared in Prairie
Schooner, The Atlanta Review, The Courtland Review and Margie, among
others. Simpson’s work is included in the anthology Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of
Disability In 2008 he and his brother David Simpson produced Audio Chapbook.
He blogs at Inside
the Invisible.
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