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Aaron Morris

Traumatized, Traumatizing


 
“Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.”
—Samuel Beckett
 
The shadows of my room are oily water
Through which the black dragonfish navigate
With lights that I can’t see.
The pods on their backs
Aren’t nautilidae hitching rides,
But words for nothingness from different parts of speech
That got the dragonfishes’ protection.
 
On that back, “zilch” is a verb,
                                                     As in, “I zilched your chin through constant shaving,”
                          Perhaps thinking of its fish’s barbel
                                                     Hanging like a thin, long strand of beard.
 
On another back, “nil” is a preposition,
                          As in, “There are no colors nil your crayon box.”
 
Then the words reveal
That they have studied human cells,
Performing mitosis and spreading out
To other parts of speech
So that, for instance,
                                      “Nil” is also an adverb,
                                                                                                    And “zero” becomes a conjunction,
                          As in, “Nothing zilches nil zerond emptily.”
“Zerond” and “emptily” are understood as the terms most in need of revision
             Due to leaving too much room for hope.
“Zerond” is open to addition,
             And “emptily” evokes pitchers poised to take in root beer.
 
Such revision will take place, no doubt.
They have that power.
Even my feet’s imprints in the room’s brown carpet
Are as fragile beneath the phrases’ waves
As footprints on the beach.
 
Beckett was wrong.  These verbal copycats
Of the void can speak eloquently
For it on their own.  Typography
Looks like a brank’s bridle holding the jaw
Of paper or digital, paper-like backgrounds,
 
Like that of the e-mail in which you told me to shut up,
To never talk to you again.
The last time we met in person, I was outside,
You in your van.  The sun, imitating the moon
Behind the glacial clouds, was lugubrious
As it shone on the falling snow.  In the cold air,
Your running car’s exhaust pipe
Released a tornado, a larger version
Of our breaths, that sucked in
The black dragonfish larvae,
Those babies shaped like tuning forks
With eyes like blossoming wistaria
At the ends of thin, long vines.
The kids had not yet grown their teeth out,
Though they did while traveling through your car’s
System, where they learned that nada conveys
Both swimming and nothing.
You said you couldn’t stop to think about the larvae,
That you had too many issues to care.
It’s just like how I didn’t care when you,
Upon concluding your remarks and driving away,
Promptly crashed into a signboard
That said either “Traumatized” or “Traumatizing.”
My vision wasn’t 20/20.




--
Aaron Morris is a student in the MFA program at West Virginia Wesleyan College. His poetry and short stories have appeared in ABZ, Et Cetera, Kanawha Review, and Turtleshell. He teaches writing and literature as an adjunct instructor at West Virginia State University.

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  • Home
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  • Issue #27 Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Art Spring 2024 >
      • Kristina Erny Spring 2024
      • Luiza Maia Spring 2024
      • Christy Lee Rogers Spring 2024
      • Erika Lynet Salvador Spring 2024
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Poetry Spring 2024 >
      • Terry Belew Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Diamond Forde Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Caridad Moro-Gronlier Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Charlie Coleman Spring 2024
      • Isabelle Doyle Spring 2024
      • Reyzl Grace Spring 2024
      • Kelly Gray Spring 2024
      • Meredith Herndon Spring 2024
      • Mina Khan Spring 2024
      • Anoushka Kumar Spring 2024
      • Cate Latimer Spring 2024
      • BEE LB Spring 2024
      • Grace Marie Liu​ Spring 2024
      • Sarah Mills Spring 2024
      • Faisal Mohyuddin 2024
      • Marcus Myers Spring 2024
      • Mike Puican Spring 2024
      • Sarah Sorensen Spring 2024
      • Lynne Thompson Spring 2024
      • Natalie Tombasco Spring 2024
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2024
      • Donna Vorreyer Spring 2024
    • Fiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Bryan Betancur Spring 2024
      • Karen George Spring 2024
      • Raja'a Khalid Spring 2024
      • Riley Manning Spring 2024
      • Adina Polatsek Spring 2024
      • Beth Sherman Spring 2024
    • Nonfiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Liza Olson Spring 2024
  • Issue #28 Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Art Fall 2024 >
      • Eric Calloway Fall 2024
      • Matthew Fertel Fall 2024
      • JooLee Kang Fall 2024
      • Jian Kim Fall 2024
      • Robb Kunz Fall 2024
      • Sean Layh Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Poetry Fall 2024 >
      • Jodi Balas Fall 2024
      • Clayre Benzadón Fall 2024
      • Catherine Broadwall Fall 2024
      • Sara Burge Fall 2024
      • Judith Chalmer Fall 2024
      • Stephanie Choi Fall 2024
      • Sarah Jack Fall 2024
      • Jen Karetnick Fall 2024
      • Ae Hee Lee Fall 2024
      • Svetlana Litvinchuk Fall 2024
      • Mary Lou Buschi Fall 2024
      • Angie Macri Fall 2024
      • Gary McDowell Fall 2024
      • Sam Moe Fall 2024
      • Camille Newsom Fall 2024
      • Elizabeth O'Connell- Thompson Fall 2024
      • Olatunde Osinaike Fall 2024
      • Jessica Pierce Fall 2024
      • Diane Raptosh Fall 2024
      • Isaac Richards Fall 2024
      • Robyn Schelenz Fall 2024
      • Christopher Shipman Fall 2024
      • Alex Tretbar Fall 2024
      • Ruth Williams Fall 2024
      • Shannon K. Winston Fall 2024
      • Wendy Wisner Fall 2024
      • Anne Gerard Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Fiction Fall 2024 >
      • J​oe Baumann Fall 2024
      • ​Morganne Howell Fall 2024
      • Matt Paczkowski Fall 2024
      • Ryan Peed Fall 2024
      • Gabriella Pitts Fall 2024
      • James Sullivan Fall 2024
  • Issue #29 Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Art Spring 2025 >
      • Irina Greciuhina Spring 2025
      • Jesse Howard Spring 2025
      • Paul Simmons Spring 2025
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2025
      • Elzbieta Zdunek Spring 2025
      • Na Yoon Amelia Cha-Ryu Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Poetry Spring 2025 >
      • Deborah Bacharach Spring 2025
      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
      • ​Ash Bowen Spring 2025
      • Christian J. Collier Spring 2025
      • ​Shou Jie Eng Spring 2025
      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
      • Matthew Gilbert Spring 2025
      • Tammy C. Greenwood Spring 2025
      • Alejandra Hernández ​Spring 2025
      • Ben Kline ​Spring 2025
      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
      • ​Tamer Mostafa Spring 2025
      • ​Rongfei Mu Spring 2025
      • Cynthia Neely Spring 2025
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2025
      • ​Bleah Patterson Spring 2025
      • ​M.A. Scott Spring 2025
      • ​Liam Strong ​ Spring 2025
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2025
      • ​Cassandra Whitaker Spring 2025
      • Angelique Zobitz Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Fiction Spring 2025 >
      • Vanessa Blakeslee Spring 2025
      • K. J. Coyle Spring 2025
      • Meredith MacLeod Davidson Spring 2025
      • Jessica Mosher Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Nonfiction Spring 2025 >
      • JM Huscher Spring 2025
      • Qurrat ul Ain Raza Abbas Spring 2025