levelheaded: Bradley Peebles was absent

The content of Matthew Vermillion’s prose poem is as straightforward as it gets. If we were to paraphrase it, we might say: When I was little, my friend was absent one day and it made me sad. Of course, this paraphrase doesn’t do the piece justice. The poem is far more interesting than our shoddy attempt at replicating it. The biggest reason why? Whereas the paraphrase is all ambiguity, the poem strikes a delicate balance between ambiguity and specificity.

If you remember the first names of any of your second grade classmates, chances are you also remember their last names. Thus, Vermillion’s decision to say “Bradley Peebles” in the title rather than “Bradley” “or “my friend” immediately establishes an eight-year old mentality. Even so, the introductory clause of the poem itself–“One day when I was in second grade”–quickly complicates that consciousness. Our speaker isn’t eight-years-old, but his sharp memory of a typically insignificant event makes it seem like he is both child and adult at the same time.

This achievement is no small feat. While the adult speaker remembers his boyhood self heading “past the tires, behind the swings, under the monkey bars,” we are transported to the specific playgrounds of our childhood. At the same time, we are adults watching a cinematic scene unfold. These particular and all-over-the-place details allow us, like the poem’s speaker, to transcend time and space. We are little and big. Here and there. As a result, we are more fully ourselves.

– The Editors