Fiction Packet

     Today in class, I overheard my group speaking about a poem as I was reading my own to the side.  They started to laugh hysterically about how the end of this one poem has a guy running out of a store screaming, "DRIVE! DRIVE!" as if they just robbed a store or something.  And after hearing my group, I actually started to laugh myself, not knowing the full story and context of the poem.  Class is over and now I'm home flipping through the poems hoping to find something when I stumble upon this poem, Allen Woodman's Wallet.  It's about a father who gets tired of having his wallet stolen every time he leaves the house.  So to get rid of his problem, he stuffs a decoy wallet full of bad lottery tickets, expired food coupons, and a fortune cookie that reads, "Life is the same old story over and over."  Which is ironic in that his wallet is always getting stolen.  But what surprises me is how this cookie's fortune is actually the opposite of what really happens in the end.  Now I won't ruin it for those of you guys who haven't read it yet, so I'll just leave you with this last thought.  I finally know why my group was laughing so hard.

City Eclogue: Pages 54-55

     The poem that really caught my eye, and I mean really, is found on pages 54-55.  What I thought was funny, was how the poem opens up.  First, it sounds all elegant and very complex, something that might need re-reading and some of that over-analysis we all think we need when reading these kinds of intricate poems.  It even goes so far as to use the word après, which needed me to google it in order to even get a grip of what I was reading.  So to re-cap, it starts off all elegant until I finally get passed the that fancy word.  This is where the funny part comes in.  Now, I'm not sure what this poem is even really about, something that has to do with some mob bosses getting paid.  Nonetheless, I discovered that every time there was a long pause between words, you could easily replace those long pauses with curse words.  For example,

     "And they say God

      this is a great fudging countryland
      of opportunity! Get me

      a piece of that shiz"

And so on.  I don't know if I'm just losing it, but I'm pretty sure I'm right on this one.