April 6, 2017Togetherness in the Age of Terror
After my father yells for the third time from the living
room to close the door, we’re paying to heat the world!
my mother looks at me and we all laugh. When is a door
not a door? she widens her eyes at the grandbabies, one
by one. When, Grandma? When? When? When it’s ajar!
And we laugh again, not because it’s funny, but because
the grandbabies can’t understand, and screw their faces
up trying to cram one thing into the wrong-shaped hole
of a whole other thing. This is us: bad jokes as ubiquitous
as open doors. Two men walk into a bar. You’d think
one of them would have seen it. HAR HAR HAR life
is funny that way did you hear about the priest and the
rabbit? And the children begin: knock knock who’s there
nobody nobody who nobody cares if you fall backward
off your chair and how they throw their heads back and
laugh is the best kind of heaven there is. Dad says what’s
so funny in there? Don’t make me get out of this chair,
come over here so I can hit you. And this is a joke, too,
as old as the other. Older than the joke we all make of
our youngest brother. (Hi, Josh!) If you can’t laugh,
what do you have left? So we laugh, and joke, and laugh
some more, and somebody says hey did you hear about
the man who blew himself up on a bridge in Russia
and, anticipating the punchline, we laugh. But our
brother has his phone in his hand, and his face has
gone still and his eyes are like rabbits trembling
beneath a fox. The children are late to silence, for
the same reason they couldn’t understand the door,
couldn’t fathom what was funny about a jar. Mom
pushes my brother’s plate closer: have some more
food, you’ve barely touched your food. And from
the other room, where he has been watching the news,
and taking our silence for a chance, my father says,
a smile like a whip in his voice: Hey! When is a man
not a man? When he’s a bomb! And we laugh. God
help us, we laugh, because this is us, and because
there is nothing else to do.
from Poets Respond