Articulation

paid extra
for the jade

tree in terra

cotta with
a blanket

of stones

because
as a child:

&

the film-
maker asks

the actor

“are you
the alone

kid in the car

who can’t
leave

the horn

alone or
the one

in the back

trying
to burrow

underneath

the driver’s
seat?”

&

i am the one
who can’t

abandon

ideas or
non-family

family or family

who see me
as too

critical: as

a form of
surveillance

&

the dis-

posable
waxed wings

from the

now-used
band aid

and language

times image
equals

denial:

i know i
know isn’t

redundant

&

when next

is said
it can mean

upcoming

or the one
after it

right?

&

i once
thought

seahorses

make-
believe



Click here to read Kevin McLellan on the origin of the poem.

Image by Alexander Grey on unsplash.com, licensed under CC 2.0.

Kevin McLellan:

The ampersand stands in for the word and which is conventionally used to connect information, but in “Articulation” the ampersands are (also) symbolic dividers with two lines of white space above and below them, thus (also) creating borders and separating language:

the speaker establishes the theme of adversity for a child which ends with a colon to implicate the following sections, yet the austere ampersand that follows attempts to stand in the way of this development (as it does throughout the poem):

&

The filmmaker (the objective speaker) poses two scenarios to the actor (the reader) about how they might act if alone in a car as a child

&

The speaker surfaces, “i am the one,” confesses that the speaker is a/the child who faced adversity

&

The now-used disposable waxed wings from the band aid implies a wound, that this “i know i / know” is real, that whatever happened (the context is the information leading up to this section) was real and is real (“now-used”), and that this (italicized) language “isn’t redundant”

&

The implication of the word next. Is the definition of this word similar to the ongoingness of a series of ampersands?

&

The memory of childhood, and “make-/ believe” implies innocence and implicates that which challenges it just like the ampersand itself.

Kevin McLellan
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