Peanuts Poem by Chris Edwards

“Correct! The photo is important! I say, Listen, they have nothing
When I get an idea. Then sit down and I make
Peanuts – meaning that every time I open my mouth,
one blank turn of events
after the next bends cunningly toward me
as I go twirling
my baton toward the future –
I personally, I impersonally, I personified and so on, lurching
querulously across each brief tableau
begat by scarecrows
in this wilderness of thorns. You get the picture
framed and mounted and all that patching
starts to make a kind of sense.”
A hush fell over the locker room
is one way to describe it. Another way, my way,
is a warm gap between bleachers
“Like to earn a hundred dollars? ”
took two loads of an astonishment. There were big deals
just beyond me, zooming in then out then in again
in a mad giddy rush while I
let a guy rope down from the scaffolding I’d
constructed as a kind of house. But it was him again,
deserted. Terrifying
soul of our surroundings, how innumerable your ripples,
to which my glances corresponded, pocketing
what they’d find!