A Way of Breathing
- A Way of Breathing
Playing jacks without hands, I’m no child of thalidomide but if I were would still show-off: Look Ma, no hands, no cavities.
Me and my Ipana smile are on my Schwinn, the chain following its tight ellipse as my feet pump rubber Popsicles to get in the jacks mood, out of traffic, on the porch, cool drink nearby, shadow of ferns like a crown. In fourth grade we learned to dance on shoe prints in the gym, some girls with girls, there were more of us, then we played jacks.
Jacks are asterisks, atoms, Sam Jaffe on Ben Casey charting birth with chalk. When you throw down jacks, you throw down molecules; some spin.
Mouth can bounce a ball, lips are rubbery anyway, especially liver lips, the way they mold a wad of paté, or pancake Silly Putty over Sunday funnies, lifting off punch lines; the lips say: pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, bake a man brittle so his arms fall off.
Follow the bouncing cherry and sing along with me, Ipana, and Mitch. A-one-and-a-two-and-a-three. I’m stuck on onesies. A deep breath activates both my Hoover: jacks vacuumedup the nostril, one, two, three, four; and some rebel: jacks out the nostril,bang-bang, bang-bang.
Thylias Moss, an associate professor of English at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), is author of five volumes of poems: Hosiery Seams on Bowlegged Woman, Pyramid of Bones, At Redbones, Rainbow Remnants in Rock Bottom Ghetto Sky and Small Congregations. She has received numerous awards and fellowships for her poetry—most recently the Whiting Writer’s Award, the Witter Bynner Prize, and the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.
