Have You Ever Considered that a Rhesus Monkey Might Be Smarter than your Child?
Robert Beveridge
I’ve tried for years to remember
the name of that song we sang
in second-grade music class,
the one where we marched
in place and the teacher scrolled
a background on the wall to help
us imagine we were headed somewhere.
But every time my mind jumps
to Wesley Willis’ “Chronic
Schizophrenia”, which is not
the kind of song one has one’s
second-graders sing, even if it
had been out in 1976.
I can remember almost
the entire rest of that year,
from the hamburgers we had
to beg to get pickles on
to reading class all the way
from the first bell to lunch
(with a recess break halfway
through) to the letdown
of a teacher who refused
to recognize the slant rhyme
of “bark” and “fork”,
but all I get are disconnected
snatches of an uncarried tune
and the same countryside
under our feet every two minutes.
Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Mason Street, Poetry Pea, and TMP Zine, among others.