Geof Huth


Fourth Car behind a Schoolbus: Schenectady, New York

STATES

Scraggly birch growing out of the sidewalk

Memory of a tree bending out from under a front porch and up to the sky, hoping to make do

STOP sign extending from the side of the schoolbus

Overwhelmingly yellow

Flashing lights catching his attention

Tapping out of brake lights, then a steady state

Stopping, stopped, stoppingness, stoppèdness

PERCEIVABLE COLORS

                                                                       ellow                 oran                lue

                                                                       reen                   ray                   ed

                                                                        ellow                ellow               ellow

THE CHILDREN INTERIORIZED

Maria, wearing mother of pearl

Lenny, staring at (not out) the window

Donna, running fingers through her hair

Dewan, finding humor all around him

Clarissa, wondering if the test would come today

Mario, tap-tap-tapping with his foot

THE CHILDREN NOT YET IN EVIDENCE

     Robert, squatting in a ball, back against a pole      Joshua, kicking ice with his sneakers

     Mallory, running to a stop                                              Krista, spinning, stopping, spinning

     Jawad, bouncing a rubber ball                                      Kahel, thinking three things

     Larissa, twirling her skirt                                                 Jessica, exposing her knees

CONCERNS OF THE DRIVERS

               Elevation on the hill                                                   Whether their car brakes will hold

               Whether they are paying enough attention      The glare of the sun

               The other passenger in the car                                Ice

THE NUMBERS WEAVING THROUGH MARIO’S HEAD

1    2    3    4    5

2    3    4    5    1

3    4    F    1    2

4    5    1    2    3

5    1    2    3    4

THE CHILDREN’S VOICES, IN THE FORM OF QUESTIONS

                         Has anyone seen my pencil?                What bus is this that rides the road?

                         Is there a test today?                               Do you have an extra sandwich?

                         What do you have for lunch?                Did we pass Jawad yet?

UNEXPECTATIONS OF THE DAY’S FUTURE

          Mallory trips                                 The bus hits a traffic cone                          Donna fails a quiz

          Krista skins her knees                Two leaves fall, swirling, together         Jawad dies

          The sound of not hearing          Mario counts in circles                              Snow falls

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE BUS PULLS IN ITS STOP SIGN

The traffic light changes to green

Five sets of brake lights turn off in a row

The cars begin to slip down the hill

One car turns to the right

A woman slips and falls in the crosswalk

A squirrel falls from a tree

He releases the brakes

A bicycle slips past him quickly, heading into morning




Geof Huth has lived in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and North and South America, all the while using language for his own purposes. His interest in language turned him into a poet, a visual poet, and a thinker on words. He works words in many media: crayon, object, paint, pen, pencil, pixel, pollen, sound, type, and video. He writes almost daily on visual poetry and related matters at his blog, dbqp: visualizing poetics. His most recent books of poetry are Out of Character (twenty-five typoglyphic visual poems), Longfellow Memoranda (366 tiny poems incorporating the vocabulary of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), and texistence (300 pwoermds co-written with mIEKAL aND).

 
 
 
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