"When I Think About the Time the Man Asked Me To Stop Fidgeting With My Pencil"
Click here to listen to Christopher Cunningham read this poem.
He muttered his way across the cafe, and stalked up to my table, and he said Will you stop that. it, moving and shaking and twisting at him, turning him over and over, does he stumble as the traffic stutters staccato of children at hopscotch, looking at him with blank stares raw But on that day, stubborn He stared, fastened by wonder at some insoluble knot,
mumbling through people eating
and talking, the chatter of lunch,
—no, not said, something more like squeezed
or clenched, strenuous and painful—
Will you put your pencil
down, and stop touching it, stop moving
it. Will you stop. Stop.
I wonder about him sometimes, worry
considering his edges and angles:
When he walks down the street,
forward, brake lights flashing like strobes?
What does he do with the contrapuntal
the herky-jerky rhythm of play?
—I imagine little girls in braids and t-shirts
as skinned knees as he pleads
his muttering commandments.
with surprise, undismayed by the jaw
of his fervor, I said, No.
and agitation, his fingers moving, nervous digits
tying and untying themselves, fretting
but I said, No. I said, Don't Look.
Just don't look, I said.
Christopher Cunningham teaches English at the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, N.J.
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