Elephants
I’m pushing an elephant up the stairs
I’m tossing out punchlines
That were never there
Over my shoulder a piano falls
Crashing to the ground
— R.E.M., The Great Beyond
To get along
in certain circles
sometimes meant
living with elephants.
The smart ones
carried peanuts
inside their pockets.
I was not one
of the smart ones.
The day I picked up
a brochure
on teaching English
as a second language
from a school
somewhere in Seoul,
was the day I planned
to run from the elephants
for good.
I’d imagined myself
teaching a class
in a room
above a bibimbap cafe,
where afterward I’d go
and drink bubble tea
with new friends.
Then I read about dog
markets and bosintang —
a popular dog meat soup,
and changed my mind.
Jimmy Russo told me
six months
before he jumped off
the George Washington Bridge
that my problem was
I didn’t know myself;
that…and I talked too much.
“Why are you so afraid
of silence?” Jimmy asked,
before passing me
his cigarette
as we watched the sun
go down
from the Brooklyn Bridge.
Thirty years later,
and I still talk too much,
according to my daughter;
still don’t know why
I’m so afraid of silence.
At night, when every sound
is another sound
in the dark,
I think about those elephants;
their big and small gifts.
When I asked someone close to the situation, back in 2012, specifically how they lived with all the elephants in the room, they’d respond in a rather matter-of-fact tone as if the answer was universally obvious to everyone but me: “I carry peanuts in my pockets.”
Published in second book Coupling, Kelsey Books 2021.
