Freshman numerals

I don't know who this is

but I know what he means.

I assimilated that char-

acter of life from those

who went through it, who

lent scope and shape, to

a degree, to my own time.

I don't know who this is

but I know what he means.

Not through rhetoric but

through experience, some

spontaneous recognitions

affix themselves through

him to my understandings.

I don't know who this is

but I know what he means.

Not through rhetoric and

experience except in the

present in America, with

its harshnesses gathered

through time as if those

freshman numerals belong

to a jacket gone missing.

I don't know who this is

but I know what he means.

He means to sharpen vow-

els as consonants, fork-

ing us himself with pon-

iards of thrilling male-

volence, a jackboot mor-

on to soothe indignation

and deny reconciliations.

Not that this means he's

not an inexhaustibly use-

ful fool in his own sabo-

tage. Just as Republican

sages planned to exploit

his frailties, they show-

ed themselves as darken-

ing their own tidy name.

Oh, my. The scheme is up

in smoke; their embraces

of each other nullify it.

Geoff Brown

Worker in a tire shop

Nashville

undated