Stevie Wonder’s
“Superstition” as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
I was born
in a pile of mirror
shards under a
ladder
on Friday
the 13th honest
and said something
isn’t right
here and is it over
yet?
There were old
testament prophets
standing
on the ladder steps
maybe screwing
in a light bulb and
telling
a joke about it. My
new
born ideas were
fluorescent
and tasted like
yeast and sour
breast
milk.
What is the name
of this
man
child?
one of the prophets
yelled
and rent his clothes
with ashy
fingers. My father
and my father’s
father lay their
hands on
my shoulders and
said Jack
the ripper
Richard
the lion heart
and a used
car salesman but
it’s all
in his head nothing
written in stone or
any
thing.
Postmodern cherubim
sat on the ledge
of a dumpster and
laughed about the red
mud of identity and
all
the nudity involved
with childbirth.
Mean
while my shriveled
everything was cold
and my mother sensed
it and swaddled
me in a big
mac wrapper she
found
on the ground. In
the moment
I understood at
least
conceptually
convenience
and I thought it
smelled
like diarrhea.
Everyone saw my
sneer
face and took it
wrong.
A high priest
looking man in
strapped sandals
rushed
over grabbed a
mirror
shard stooped
down and sliced
off my foreskin
tossed it over
his shoulder into
the dumpster while
the cherubim flew
back to the north
pole.
Men take
what they are
given and pretend
to like it
til they die it’s
like
being a rodeo
clown get it he
said.
Circumcised and
destitute
there was nothing
left for me
to do but wait
out the sting
so I bled and baby
babbled a
lamentation
if this is how it
feels
to start how bad
will it hurt
to end?
(Alley cats dry
humped to the
existential cricket
chirp silence.)
The prophets over
heard me twisted
their beards
whispered
together looked at
me sad and said
wanna hear
a dirty joke?
There’s no rest
you know
not even
on the sabbath.
To Calvary
Sunday school
shoelaces
waxed in maple syrup
against the rug burn
if it rubs it
starts the fire in
the chafe. Melt into
the cream
carpet puffed up
pink in the palm lines.
One bunny ear hops
in circles, dead drunk through the meadow
all the way home to
strangle bunny
two with its hear
listen close. Thou shalt
shout ‘til the red
from the cheeks ripples ‘cross
cartoon soothe
giggles animated presto lips
shout the tick tock
upside the hush
puppies from
Payless. Moses parted the sock seam
across the crushed
toe cuticle, deaths drowned there in
the salt, in the
plagues pumped to the ankles
tied up tight to
choke the slip from the sweat hell
and high water rain
reign
go away
back into the cool
between ice water
coos from mother
goose
and her brood of
tickle fingers
up the side stitches
to the tongue
tied
pockets dropping
tithe quarters.
Pay the devil. Cross
the trickle into no man’s land
scribbled peach with
crayon and scratched
crooked with the
minivan bump.
Memories of Generational Anxiety
8ish
I am playing
baseball in a maroon
t-shirt. The white
elastic
collar is
overstretched and
itching my neck. I
think
this collar droops
because I have too
big a head.
There is something
wrong
with my head.
3
I am in
the pediatric wing
of a hospital
holding a stuffed
horse. My father has
a six-pack
of 7Up cans on his
lap. He says
you had surgery on
your
ears. I think I can
hear
that and how did I
wake up
from that crocodile
pit?
4
I am crying
from a cut
on my index finger
holding
my grandfather’s
pearl
handled razor blade
from the
Philippines. I think
World War II has
ruined
everything and I am
selfish.
9
I am reading
the Methodist hymnal
in
a back row pew.
A woman with a rhino
plasty looks me in
the eye
and I decide that
there is beauty
in the world and her
nose is
not it so I should
throw up.
12
A plastic figurine
of Pittsburgh
Penguins great
Jaromir Jagr sits
on my father’s oak
desk
shelf. I had my
mother buy it
for him because the
J and J
sounds felt good to
me and I
thought dad would
like it. We
are not a hockey
family.
11
I am watching
the world’s
strongest man on
television
in the family room.
My mother hollers
something
down from the
kitchen. I holler
something back up.
She comes
down the staircase and
says
I shouldn’t holler
at her.
I should walk up to
the kitchen
and speak at a
normal volume.
She walks back up
the staircase and I
think what
does Thomas
Jefferson have
to do with any of
this?
11ish
I am standing
in the staircase.
My parents have sent
me
to my room and I am
giving them
the finger and
mouthing
the words fuck and
you. They can’t see
me. They watch
television and I
worry
about the ten
commandments.
4
I am in
the backyard my
father’s
friends are building
a tree
house for me and my sister.
I crack my head
on a gas-powered
generator
and think there is
pain
in my head where
is dad?
14
I am hugged
against my aunt’s
breast. My
grandfather has forgotten
how to play our
favorite card
game and has given
up
trying to remember.
He starts
shuffling the cards
and
mutters to himself
there
will be blood my
aunt says
don’t worry his mind
is else
where. I say where.
She says in the war
our
family’s minds are
always
at war it seems. I
think
is it in my veins my
mind to war worry
and
we used to play
cards before all
this.
For Mom
Your permanent smelled
like Kip’s Burger French
fries
on account of the
umbilical cord being filled
with coleslaw. I heard you
pipsqueak
from your love handles,
the pinpoint
above your left hip, and merci
beaucoup
for ice chips from a
basement
bleached cafeteria fridge.
Water
on the tongue numbed
the labor in the arches
of your feet. Thanks
for the name.
The doctor flipped a coin
for plug or outlet,
electricity in
my crotch crackled like a
Christmas
tree and when George
Washington landed
face up I sprouted a man
and choked
out purple. People in
moustaches
cracked about college
football and
wrapped me in a Midwestern
onesie made of cornhusks.
Organic,
gluten-free garments still
diaper rash.
You rubbed gluestick on
my ass cheeks and put me
back together again. All
noses
against cheeks and
promises
against neck skin. Breath
gripping
the base of the skull and
between
the shoulders. Still from
the ice
chips cold. Support circle
of busy
bodies bustling around my
blood,
my blood.
Even with new eyes I
stacked
the hospital floor tiling
in columns
of eight. Rows of eight
and outlined
the constructions with
spittle
from my soft spot. Order,
order. Night Court played on the hospital
TV fuzzy with tax-paid
static
and generic Sprite. You
ate oyster
crackers and burped up the
answers
to my questions: “Are the
stacks straight
enough to keep us safe or
are the rows
wish-washed in ammonia and
sponge
bath? Should you have
called me
out as Samson in spite of
all this
hair?” Never mind,
Delilah, your gypsy
jewels shone pretty in the
wheelchair
chrome, and we rolled out
in chariots
of amniotic fluid,
baptized
into this war.
© 2012 Evan Nave
