HOW TO TELL A RIGHT-TRUNKED ELEPHANT FROM A LEFTY
check for the side with ruffled whiskers
and wrinkles, elephants tend to tilt
their trunks to scoop fruit so one half’s
always a bit shabbier than the other. The end
of my husband’s left eyebrow is sparse
because of the direction he faces
while sleeping. All those beat-up tractors
heaving diesel across our fields,
the fluorescent smirk of strip malls
I see as I speed down Route 22,
the Canada geese—those trucker swans,
those bootlegged angels—if god’s
got a rumpled, favored side
we’re it. We’re the word
that’s been written with a dominant
hand. Is it because we longed for more
legible script? A world we’d slide
our sorrows down as long as it was written
in smooth cursive. We’re ready
to unknow now. When we place Bibles
in roadside motel rooms, slide
flowers into the spokes of white bikes,
when a woman calls the cops
and orders half pepperoni half
mushroom while her husband goes to
give her daughter a goodnight kiss,
we aren’t asking for answers
we’re asking god to switch hands.
—from Poets Respond
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Lexi Pelle: “Frank X. Gaspar wrote, ‘It’s never the aboutness of anything but the wailing underneath it.’ This poem, although based on a relatively uncharged article, was a slow settling into that wailing.” (web)
