Tag: Wednesday

Mr.

Mr. “Screams ‘GEEZ!'” went rarin’ by my left window,
almost as though he’d even had a care in the world–
if it hadn’t been for that cheez whiz spritzer marmalady
gettin’ her gunk in his junk (or his gunk
in her junk, can’t quite remember).

Elemensexary, my dear Tulip the Begonia Wallace.
I’ve been awaiting your arrival for some time now,
young man. I can’t wait to get a good pasta cooking,
if you know what I mean. If you don’t,
no worries, we’ll get you set up like a Pastafarian
on Wednesday evenings, ensconced in the price of
the pledge of allegiance. You may consider this schedule
an eighth more sensational than the tap dodger aligners
who’ve risen to prominence within the last four months.

But enough of that nonsense, it’s about time for me
to devote the digestion of fandom complication atoms
to a starry-eyed wanderer named McGriff (who looks
nothing like Elliott Gould, no matter what LaVernia says).

Tour de Force

Of Nice and Men is a snappy, genre-driven play predicated on your typical hero’s journey through the heartland once regarded as antiquated–cornball, even–in the pseudo-sophisticated shadow of a cultured society we’ve been thrust into by the more majorly militaristic manchildren among us (trading individual liberties for big boy toys and candy).

Since we occupy an epoch where modern delineation truly has strangled the life out of chronological concerns (that is to say we’ve had our fair share of allegorical parallelograms in our time, no doubt about that, no siree), if you find yourself charged with taking in this three-hour beauty, you can–and should–simply attend the theatre as a pilgrim of the arts, allowing yourself to become awash in a different reality, even if only for a glimmering moment.

Other than the obvious sociological implications afforded to us by the title, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the tap dance sequences that pop up seemingly from out of nowhere (even though I’ve just spoiled the twist for you, but you pay that no mind). In a nutshell, this tour de force pits Americana versus whimsy at the intersection of Leap and Gamble Avenues.

For all my field trip aficionados out there, I recommend bringing a schoolbusful of primary school students to see the Wednesday matinee, as tickets for 12 and under are free.

Crotch

Precisely between pages 182 and 183
of a battered, overused
elementary school Spanish textbook
on the neighborhood Indianapolis Goodwill’s
hardcover books shelf, you’ll find
a perfectly-preserved eyelash
wedged in the crotch of the binding,

once attached to the heavy eyelid
of Jacob Stern, a third grader
with no real foreign language aptitude,
any sense of which would have been lost
while sitting in the back row of Spanish class
during Sr. Cerasoli’s Wednesday morning lecture
extolling the virtues of ser and estar,
a class period that felt
like it could last forever, though
certainly not in infamy (until old Jake
dropped his eyelash and roped us
into this entire absurd narrative).