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Friendly Neighborhood PTO

 

We are so stuck that tonight

the moon is a clot

in a dark artery.

I do believe in the need for us to communicate

a little more like Styrofoam cups

in the same storm drain,

and a little less like zoo animals in separate cages.

 

There is a joke I never “got”: A Buddhist

says to an alcoholic, and an engine fire

says to a green piece of plastic,

“Of course we are sleepy after destroying ourselves.”

A woman pregnant with pine needles agrees.

 

Tonight we are so secretive that the moon

is a milky blind eye.

We are confident in three things: The archivist

at the Patent Office

who wears yellow framed glasses in hopes

that the file clerk will notice

considers herself a folklorist; the Patent Office

is internally divided over whether it contains legal documents

or creation myths; and,

we must consult the Patent Office in hopes of learning more

about the purposes of the grooves in tooth picks.




Xoe Amer

levelheaded: Friendly Neighborhood PTO

 

“Friendly Neighborhood PTO” is an attractive act in three scenes. Using simple language that is easy to digest, the poem’s content is rather rich and complex. Its three fully-packed stanzas offer a joyful reading experience, one that is also much more than just joyful if you wish to focus on the poem’s images, short in description but packed with possibilities. The poem expands as it moves along, shifting in subject and in atmosphere. It is highly re-readable. Let’s dive in.

 

The first stanza describes a conflict that cannot be solved through the level of communication currently available to the opposing sides. The first sentence is a fully-developed metaphor: “We are so stuck that tonight / the moon is a clot / in a dark artery.” You’ve heard about the moon in poems a thousand times. Still, this one stands for a barrier of motion, not the usual source of light and awe. The word “tonight” allows this image to work. It situates us in time and atmosphere, but also combines the physical world with the emotional situation. Notice the artery is “dark” – not a necessary adjective if you’re merely constructing a clotted artery metaphor, but “dark” here connects us back to “tonight,” and we can see the night itself as an artery through which the moon attempts to move.

 

With the next sentence, “we” become “I” as the speaker describes two modes of existence, one preferable to the other. She wishes to communicate as “Styrofoam cups / in the storm drain” instead of as caged zoo animals. We can imagine these cups floating near the drain, aware of the dire situation surrounding them. The speaker wants to acknowledge this sense of emergency positively, and experience the appropriate camaraderie. She communicates her wish with subtlety, by suggesting it should happen just “a little more.” On the other side of the equation are the “zoo animals in separate cages” and it’s easy to feel their fate is worse than the Styrofoam cups’. This stanza is merely two sentences long. It is saying: we are communicating poorly right now. Better share the crisis than be safe alone.

 

In the second stanza the poem grows stranger and tougher to grasp. We are told a joke we have to keep in mind the speaker “never ‘got’.” The Buddhist and an engine fire are telling the alcoholic and a piece of plastic respectively: ”of course we are sleepy after destroying ourselves.” Is this an anti-self-destruction metaphor? And why the juxtaposition of a human speaker and an object speaker inside a joke? There are no obvious solutions, but it’s fun to think about. Even further, what does the woman who is pregnant with pine needles signify in her agreeing with the Buddhist and the engine fire? It’s an amusing mystery. Maybe the speaker is pregnant. Maybe she sees pregnancy as self-destruction, but not without humor. Let’s leave this stanza while noticing it is made of two sentences, just like the first.

 

In the final stanza, we’re back to “tonight,” back to “the moon.” Now the moon is a “milky blind eye,” and “milky” puts us in the galaxy as if it too was an artery we’re trying to move through. It is too secretive and we remain blind. The opening sentence clearly resonates with the opening sentence of the first stanza. The rest will resonate a little more with the second. Here’s what we know: there’s an archivist in a Patent Office. The archivist cares to attract the file clerk. The archivist cares for folklore which maybe has more heart than patents do. So someone here seems quiet and shy and wishing to be noticed. This someone holds a secret inside – that of passion, knowledge, awareness to the social world. On the grand level, there’s a clash between the technical, dry, bureaucratic “legal documents” and the creative, imaginative, perhaps exciting “creation myths”–both opposing aspects of the Patent Office. It is the Patent Office or what it stands for in this poem that the speaker stresses should be the source of our learning about “purposes.” Those could be the purpose of life, the purpose of the galactic universe, the purpose of communication, and the laws of physics determining tooth pick grooves and the elliptic course of moons.

 

The Patent Office metaphor is complex, producing an image that’s both personal (archivist/clerk relationship) and global (universal seeking of purpose). Patent Office, for us, invokes Einstein. And without going into details about the great questions of quantum mechanics, it’s enough to situate us in a world of wonder and exploration, one that is both about matter and about philosophy. The third stanza is, you guessed, two-sentences long. Its use of multiple semi-colons allows for the long second sentence to be just one sentence. Why this structure of duos? Perhaps to imitate but then subvert the concept of cause and effect. Perhaps to lay down a statement and then try to poetically contemplate it in an associative manner. We mentioned this poem is highly re-readable, and we think that’s because the language is accessible, allowing us to deal with complex content. Given the images are elusive and multi-layered, simple language and friendly word-choice are the right means to this poem’s end.

 

What’s with the subject then? Tonight we are unsure, wish to consult the thinning moon.

 

 

-The Editors