Hippopotamus

Josh Wild, Purdue University

Abstract

I would say these poems are primarily issues of perspective, similar to performing in a marching band. You're on the field, and all you can see are the ways in which everybody else is screwing up. You want to scream, "Do you even understand the concept of linearity?!" At the nadir of it all, you slam your mellophone into the back of a trumpeter's head, and this flips his helmet around and leaves you blowing blood into your mouthpiece and horn (blood, you think fondly, that must still be in the horn somewhere!). Your former Marine band instructor loves this turn of events; you wonder if he choreographed the whole thing so that there might be contact and the issuing forth of bodily fluids. What you can't see or understand yet is how great the performance looks from the stands. They see you pulling off your abstract polygonal formations as if you were a single body; they're not looking for errors and wouldn't find them even if they were. You're too close, is the thing. You're not taking into account what fifty yards of distance does to a foot's divergence from the ideal. Let alone what not being you does to the performance of being you. There are still Mongol hordes roaming the countryside, yes. But lord, you'll never know how staggeringly coherent you look as they tear you limb from limb.

Degree

M.F.A.

Advisors

Platt, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Fine arts|American literature|Creative writing

COinS