THE EQUATION THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING

Andrew Cox

BlazeVOX [books]
Buffalo, New York

The Equation That Explains Everything by Andrew Cox Copyright 2010 Published by BlazeVOX [books] All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews. Printed in the United States of America Book design by Geoffrey Gatza Cover Art by Michael Havard First Edition
ISBN: 9781935402954 Library of Congress Control Number 2009944207 BlazeVOX [books] 303 Bedford Ave Buffalo, NY 14216 Editor@blazevox.org

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Acknowledgments The author would like to thank the editors of the following publications in which some of the poems in this volume have appeared:
The Literary Review The Swimmer in His Head Ascent A Damn Good Excuse The Berkeley Poetry Review The Neighborhood Bar Seen as a Church High Plains Literary Review The Missouri Lottery Witness Evangelical Red Cedar Review Driving Under the Influence The Laurel Review Call In, That Number Is, Howve Yall Been Souwester Self-Employed River Styx In Your Face, Funny, Nothing Changes Like the Weather in Missouri, Spring Cleaning, Bens Sneakers, At This Party, Two Plus Two Equals Five, Little TV Set, News Release and Chances American Literary Review The American Museum, Intermission (published as parts of a longer poem Theres a Sucker Born Every Minute) Delmar Extended Family Wordvirtual.com Expense Report, Cracking the Code, Deep Breaths, Little Sighs, Office Politics, Voice Mail and Hitting It Big, or Frostbite in the Tropics (as part of an hypertext chapbook, Company X) Gulf Coast Ordinary Things in the Arkansas Delta Panhandler For Instance 2River View Chapbook Series: Fortune Cookies Basement(originally in Sentence), Chain of Events, Childhood, Look(all three originally in Natural Bridge), I Think I Am Making a Mistake (originally in New Mexico Humanities Review), Around These Parts (originally in The Brooklyn Review), Villanelle: Fortune Cookies, Side Effects May Include(both originally in Pebble Lake Review), Random Thoughts on the Way to the Chinese Restaurant, Halloween, Underpinnings (both originally in 2River View), and I Know a Man
Two Plus Two Equals Five won the International Poetry Prize from River Styx (judged by Philip Levine).

Table of Contents
Two Plus Two Equals Five.........................................1 Little TV Set .................................................................3 News Release ...............................................................5 The Neighborhood Bar Seen as a Church.................6 Call in, that Number Is ...............................................8 The Swimmer in His Head .......................................10 At This Party..............................................................11 The American Museum.............................................15 Driving Under the Influence ....................................17 Hitting It Big, or Frostbite in the Tropics ..............19 Chances ......................................................................22 Funny..........................................................................23 Bens Sneakers............................................................26 In Your Face ..............................................................28 Intermission ...............................................................33 Basement ....................................................................35 Chain of Events .........................................................37 I Think I Am Making a Mistake ..............................38 Around These Parts...................................................39 Villanelle: Fortune Cookies......................................40 Random Thoughts on the Way to the Chinese Restaurant ................................................................41 Halloween ..................................................................43 Childhood ..................................................................44 Look............................................................................45 Late One Summer......................................................46 Underpinnings ...........................................................47 My Response..............................................................48 The Baby in the Back Seat ........................................49 Side Effects May Include ..........................................50 I Know a Man ............................................................51

Howve Yall Been ....................................................53 Ordinary Things in the Arkansas Delta ..................56 The Missouri Lottery................................................58 Nothing Changes Like the Weather in Missouri ...59 Extended Family .......................................................61 Self-Employed ...........................................................66 Office Politics ............................................................67 Expense Report .........................................................68 Voice Mail ..................................................................69 Cracking the Code ....................................................71 A Damn Good Excuse ..............................................72 Spring Cleaning .........................................................73 For Instance ...............................................................75 Life of the Party.........................................................77 Jungle Gym ................................................................78 Deep Breaths, Little Sighs ........................................80 Evangelical .................................................................82

THE EQUATION THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING

TWO PLUS TWO EQUALS FIVE

And so a toy drum equals a Saturday Night Special, a boy grows up to be a foot doctor, a little girl subtracts yes from no and lives out the sum, multiplying it by minus one on her death bed, saying, "yes, father, I'm coming, don't leave me," while a stuffed rabbit equals a lingering good-bye, good-bye to the one face we'll never see again, except in the past (that string unwinding behind us, because you'll never know when you'll have to go back) and so one wedding gown (packed in mothballs in a cedar chest in an attic) divided by a field (blanketed by snow and unmarred by footsteps) equals a fierce longing and yet, for what, the man who talks to himself can't say, only that it has something to do with frost-bitten feet and someone who plays a flute and someone who beats a drum and many marching forward, always forward and slightly out of step, alwaysand so one broken nose equals the scar from triple bypass surgery and the return to a simple way of life, if we could only get there, if we could only find that perfect mattress on which to flop, the perfect soap for washing off the day's residue, the perfect moment to unveil our new hope in the equation that explains everything.

LITTLE TV SET
Somewhere in us all a face, say a young woman's face, shines in the flicker put out by a little TV set. Somewhere in our heads a tiny hand takes up the remote control and changes the channel. Somewhere inside us a small heart puts itself at the mercy of bad reception, puts itself in front of image after image: this one a college kid in a bear's suit, this one a man who swallowed more goldfish than anyone in history, this one a mom and a daughter embracing at the vanishing point on the far horizon. Day by day the young woman in our heads grows younger, so young, so innocent, so filled with longing for the radio, she stops staying up for the late movie and soon she loses interest

in prime time, becomes bored with afternoon reruns, forgets who's who in mid-day soaps, cries in despair at the hair of game-show hosts, gets in such a funk she summons up all the guts she has left and in one last heroic act cuts the power. Somewhere in us all a baby girl goes back to where she came from. Somewhere inside our heads the signals are dying out. Somewhere in us a whole Saturday of cartoons will someday go unwatched.

NEWS RELEASE
No celebrity, no notorious starlet, no expert on body fat will make an appearance. I have no times, dates, places for your calendar. There's nothing special, novel or weird happening here. Only a hush, a little dumbness, a little oblivion. But I must give you the low-down, the inside dope, the scoop. I have to report no one said a word. No charged statement, no second-hand information leaked from anyone's lips. No one spilled the beans. Only this well-versed silence will I uncover. No corruption, no scandal, just that far off an easygoing dew falls on a patch of watermelons who right now have nothing much to say either.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD BAR SEEN AS A CHURCH

I'm black, said the man so black overhearing him made me feel the catholic priest though I'm southern atheist, though we weren't trapped in the confessional but standing at a bar my wife, having the knack of saying something as some alley cat might at the night's most silent moment, said, I'm adopted, causing the man in a repairman's uniform to say, I'm a loner, with a certain gleam in his eyes, and the bartender, a buxom lady with orange hair, to say, I'm not a loner, but I am lonely, and one after the other, the people in the neighborhood bar to say: dietitian, unemployed, divorced but married again, hopeful but too scared to do anything about it, ugly and bad teeth and proud to be an American, the tragically situated but comically predisposed they were all there, even Old Abe Lincoln, an old lady in three tattered coats

and black rubber boots, who sipped her draft beer with something like concern written across her face, and who exclaimed above all the others, I've had it, but I ain't dead yet.

CALL IN, THAT NUMBER IS

Mrs. Such-and-Such phones from some suburb and explains how she thinks her husband's having an affair with her neighbor and confidant. What's she to do? All the clues point to it: that lipstick on his collar, and the odor well, her friend's the only one who smells like that. I never picture their faces. I tune in and answer, See, Mrs. Such-and-Such, the world wants and wants, but it's easily bored, so wait, he'll tire of your neighbor's haunches and come back to you humbled and a little wiser, and though you'll lose a friend, you'll gain a mink coat. Then let him know how you feel. She called back during the dog food commercial and asked if we could meet. I said no and took the call from the boy who had a thing for his mother's younger sister. What could he do?

All's fair in love and war, I said, buck it up and find a nice girl your own age to bamboozle. The right answer? I don't know, I'm winging this, but my producer says that I continue to have a large and deeply disturbed following.