20160721

Bob Heman


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Sometimes the winter is too large to allow the spring to enter.


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The symbols that represented the name of the god could be rearranged to form trees, or a sudden ocean. There were animals where the men were supposed to be. There was a kind of light that could be found nowhere else.


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Must be taught to use the machines, including the pencil, and the candle. Must be taught how to enter the map, how to leave the cave, how to move the pond. Must be shown the voices that live inside. Must have the colors explained.


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Some maps contain doors that can be opened with a special word or symbol. Behind them are destinations not even the cartographer ever imagined.


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Finds a trolley in his poem for the first time. Finds a man made of knotty pine and a bear whose dimensions are wrong. Uses the word “forsythia” to add depth to the room.


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There was not enough spring for all of them. Sometimes they had to settle for the snow that was left over, or for photos of the beach in summer.


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You will forget where the train is going. You will forget which foods stick together. You will forget why the animal is famous. You will forget how to use verbs.


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Couldn’t tell the difference between warm and cold, between the grapefruit and the watermelon, between the woman and the window, between counting and coloring. Couldn’t tell the difference between water and the word “water.”


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He believes that counting is a different way of spelling.


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Is too tired to enter, or to leave, or to adjust itself so that it matches the others. Its place on the map different each time. The word it uses only assumed to be in English.


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Red the color they were allowed. Blue the shape of the chickens. The history of the farmer was both green and brown. The white sky only sometimes an explanation. The yellow always louder than the bears.


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There were other captions that included the word “red” or the name of a sailor. There were deer that had been taught simple tasks and were kept inside a broken building. The rain filled the animals each time it arrived. There were not enough numbers to count them all.


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If he waited too long there would be no carts, no gravel, no frogs. If he waited too long the woman would want to talk.


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It says the curtains must match. Was the frog complete before the story was told?


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One must look for the word “hound,” for the word “screen,” for the word “airplay.” One must count the ants hidden in the design.




Bob Heman lives on the west end of Long Island in what was once the city of Brooklyn. He has edited CLWN WR (formerly Clown War) since the early 1970s.
 
 
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1 Comments:

Blogger karl baker [ACME] said...

excellent, thanks bob.

9:46 AM  

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