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Everything is Teetering on the Edge of Everything with a Polite Smile


The light hits my office window

With unsuspected force for this

Time of year. My window is open

In February. I’m so nervous

I could sleep all day. But if

I sleep, I will be missing out

In all the activities in my hood.

The park is bustling. Day drinking.

When I look back on it,

I’ll remember today as a good one,

Despite the butterflies

Running  themselves into my stomach.

When I call in sick, a storm

Erupts somewhere in the world.

I flick a bug off from my arm

And buildings collapse. When

I sleep my dreams are in a dull

World of equilibrium. I don’t

Prefer demise, I guess I am

Just used to it from a view

That can only be described as

Distant. From that distance all

The houses are swallowed by clouds.

I poo a little. It’s so glorious out.

The bug shouldn’t have been

On my arm. It’s not Spring time yet.




Drew Scott Swenhaugen

levelheaded: Everything Is Teetering on the Edge of Everything with a Polite Smile


“Everything Is Teetering on the Edge of Everything with a Polite Smile,” the title of Drew Scott Swenhaugen’s poem, comes from a couple of lines of a Charles Simic poem. Like any tribute, the nod not only acknowledges the source, but also defines and situates, a little bit, he who makes it. The action of the title reflects the speaker’s struggle to balance acknowledgement of how oversized, overwhelming and “glorious” life is with strong ego.


The poem begins with “[t]he light hits my office window / With unsuspected force.” When “everything” is suspended in fine balance, even the small force of light can tip the scales, can feel physical. A key word right in the second line is “unsuspected.” The speaker seems to have his own forceful ideas about the world, one of which being just how February light should behave. Reading on, the “I” pronoun is all over the place in the poem. But just lines after the “unsuspected” moment, he says he’s “so nervous / [he] could sleep all day.” He pivots away from probable reactions to nerves—who, really, can sleep while nervous?— and considers countering the surprising light with his own “unsuspected” event.


Here the speaker turns again, worrying that “if / I sleep, I will be missing out / In all the activities in my hood.” So there was an initial assessment of being “so nervous,” then a swing to being able to sleep all day, then a swing back to dismissal of the idea: unsteady shivering of scales on the balance.


Interestingly, Swenhaugen decides not to use an apostrophe, abbreviating neighborhood to, simply, “hood.” This choice broadens the possibilities of meaning for the word, to include the garment; the hinged part of the car covering its engine; and the suffix denoting a state or nature (childhood, likelihood, etc.). Read like this, if the speaker sleeps, he will weigh in less on what’s happening on and around him.


Another forceful moment is “[w]hen I look back on it, / I’ll remember today as a good one.” He’s feeling nervous, the day isn’t even done yet, and this guy is ready to project a good memory onto the day? Later, the bug he flicked “shouldn’t have been / On [his] arm. It’s not Spring time yet.” Seems like he’s, of necessity, asserting himself, kind of texturally up against disturbances.


In the loudest moments of ego, the speaker says, “[w]hen I call in sick, a storm / Erupts somewhere in the world. / I flick a bug off from my arm / And buildings collapse.” Pure instances of inflation of the self’s perceived effect—or is it? A different way to read these lines is not with the idea of cause-and-effect, but with simultaneity. The guy calls in sick, and surely somewhere else in the world there’s a storm. Dude flicks the bug, and surely somewhere a building is collapsing. Grandeur and insignificance all in one.


The speaker of the poem struggles, as we all do, to retain his balance in a violently unstable world. He pivots his way outward, until his view is “[d]istant”—a view that removes him from the thick of things, that democratizes and soothes and smooths his perspective.



– The Editors