"Thats a Misnomer"

A fingertip caught on the brass

The wiring protruding

 

Have you ever said something just to see the result?

Senseless provocation for a social experiment

The result of a spoken word

It amazes me

 

A persons eyes will glaze over

The face will slacken

Almost immediately they are transported

To another time, another place

 

This usually starts with a story

Something to introduce the topic

Like, I heard say a nurse with a southern accent

Say, “That’s a misnomer.”

 

It was in regards to a seizure

And whether a person can swallow their tongue

 

But I told my father about it,

Since we both have the same sense of humor

I figured it would make for light conversation

 

But when I said one word

I saw the immediate reaction

The distant look on his face

 

He started to tell me a story,

One I hadn’t heard before,

And if you knew my family

Stories are told and retold

So this was a point so simply listen

 

When he was a boy he

Used to have to wait for his mother

To pick him up from school

So occasionally he would go swimming

 

But there was one time

While he was at the public pool

Everyone was called out of the water

 

He couldn’t figure out why

 

But once everyone was out

And circling the edges

He looked beneath the surface

 

And saw a figure

A boy

Laying on the bottom

Convulsing beneath the ripples

 

Twitching and jerking in a slow motion fashion

Spitting intermittent streams of bubbles

 

He finishes with,

“I don’t even know if he lived.”

And went back to drinking his coffee

 

Later that day we were working on

And electrical outlet

 

An odd job for pocket cash

But

 

His fingertip caught on the brass

The wiring protruding

And for a moment his convulsion

Reminded me of the boy in the pool

05/06/2012

Author's Note

somehow this all took place over the course of one day for me, so i condensed it to this...

Reviews

[jessdixon]

Wow, sad story. I like how the poem comes full circle, and once again, the imagery brought the poem to life.

[Mockingbird]

this poem reads like a story with a dark edge.it's funny how a single lexical item could trigger a reaction due to an instantaneous recollection in detail. this was the first time your dad probably had recalled this memory, and since it was so long ago, he was detached from the event, while we're left breathless at the end of the anecdote. however when he experienced that 'moment of convulsion' that triggered the memory of that boy and tried to picture if this was what it had been like for him. i agree that it's amazing what a single spoken word could evoke. this is a great subject for a poem and you did an excellent job of portraying it.

[...]

Astounding! It's unbelievable to evidence the time travel in your words. The journey of images is like a visual which is powerful and powerfully thought-provoking. What a compelling piece of writing! Our lives are rich with examples of changes in perception and the journey of memories from father to son. What you've written are the memoirs of the human impulse. Spectacular work, my friend.