Saturday, November 14, 2020

Deciphered from the 3rd Dynasty


in a fragment of clay behind a crosshatch of wedges the enshrined fingerprint         and befuddlement                 of an insolent boy 


who rolled his 

stone-bored eyes


at a carefully prepared

explanation of the miraculous

subtraction by addition, if you can 


read it, you will know the boy


couldn’t give two shits 

about columns and digits


not when there are sleeping owls

to slap from the trees, knee-high fields 

of thorny weeds to stomp in bare feet 


so many wings

to pull from the bees 

this morning 


in an underfunded cuneiform 

lab, some poor sap stirs


her cold coffee with hermeneutics

she is going to crack


this tablet, she is just seconds

away and on the verge 


of the last, great 

human translation: 


when will we, like, ever need

to know this, you know, like

in real life


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6 comments:

  1. Well, like, I'm sure such thoughts surface, like you know, frequently in the minds of home-schooled youth!

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  2. I’m with the boy!! I choose a walk in the woods, a wade in the creek! Cheers.

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  3. Okay we may not need it in real life but hopefully a grain of curiousity will now be in ones brain to at least be inquisitive!

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  4. A sheer delight! I loved all your details about the boy and the lab worker, and especially the slangy finale. (Which has surely been said by many generations of students in whatever the slang of the day was.)

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