The Biscuit Joint: Poems

Roy G. Biv

26 ROY G. BIV The English say “Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain” when they try to recall the colors of the rainbow, but that assumes a sense of history, which we Americans don’t like so much. What we like is sports, even soccer, but what does Greg O’Keeffe of The Liverpool Echo mean when he describes forward Landon Donovan’s “coruscating pace down the flanks”? Well, “pace,” yeah, but “flank” is a steak in this country, and “coruscating” never even made it through customs! Some mnemonics are funner than the things they remind you of, such as “Kids Prefer Cheese Over Fried Green Spinach,” that is, the order of taxonomy in biology— kingdom, phylum, class, et cetera—which is helpful when you’re trying to understand Darwin, but only half of us believe in him. And some are so confusing! Take “Red on black, friend of Jack / Red on yellow, kill a fellow.” Or is it “Black on red, you’ll soon be dead.” Or “You heard what I said.” Maybe it’s “Red on black, you’re on the right track,” though by the time you remember, you’ve either been killed by the eastern coral snake or had a heart attack as the Florida scarlet snake slithers harmlessly away. No, I’m going with Roy G. Biv, because I think that would make a great name for an American poet, one whose dog wants to know why men look at women the way they do. Also, why have y’all messed up the environment, and no heaven for dogs—now why’s that? This poet’s high school teacher would bring to class a picture of her sister, who has just won the lottery, and tear it up and give every student a piece of the torn photo. He’d write poems with titles like “Are Nudists Nuts?”—the question of our time, to my way of thinking—and lines 27 like “We approve of intersections but are opposed to streets” and “Out with mayors, in with majordomos” and “We have too many potholes. They should be filled with violets or ideas.” Let me be the Emerson of our day, and let me say to our national poet, not “Thou shalt have the whole land for thy park and manor, the sea for thy bath and navigation,” but “Thou shalt go over to thy friend’s house to play and end up looking out a storm door on a snowy day while thy friend shoots baskets outside and, seated behind thee, his mother gets quietly drunk, and in that way shalt thou learn despair” and “Thou shalt be sent as a boy by thy mother to fetch thine older sister, who is making out with some guy in a car, and thou shalt watch them for a minute as they swap slow, dreamy kisses, and thou shalt creep away silently, and in that way shalt thou learn privacy.” Look! It’s late at night, and a truck idles at a loading dock, and there’s Roy G. Biv, and he’s thinking of the types of cranial nerves and trying to remember which are sensory, which motor, and which both, and he says to himself, “Some Say Marry Money, But My Brother Says Big Boobs Matter More” but also “Some Say Marilyn Monroe, But My Brother Says Brigitte Bardot? Mmmm, Mmmmm!” and even “Some Say Marry Money, But My Brother Says ‘Bitch Betta Have My Money!’” as he packs the truck with tchotchkes and geegaws and whatnots and slides each tightly into place while we sleep in the next town over and dream of everything we forgot or never knew in the first place, and we do now, or not yet, but we will, and soon. ...