Hum If You Can't Sing: Poems

By Glen Brown

"In poems that are often meditative, humorous, philosophical, speculative, Glen Brown's Hum If You Can't Sing revisits all sorts of narratives -mythic allegories, fairy tales, news stories that boggle the mind, family histories-all in the service of blurring the edges between what is strange and surreal and what is domestically habitual

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glen Brown
• Release date: Feb 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9798987722503

Glen Brown

Glen Brown is a former teacher and long-ago martial artist. He taught creative writing, literature, and philosophy at Lyons Township High School in La Grange, Illinois; composition at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois; and composition, humanities, poetry, and philosophy at Benedictine University in Lisle, Illinois. He retired after forty-six years of teaching. He now spends his time playing guitar, listening to music, taking walks with his wife, reading poetry, and enjoying his grandchildren.

Book preview

Hum_If_You_Can't_Sing_front_cover.jpg

Published by:

Boat House Productions

Statesville, NC

boathouseproductionsnc.com

[e-mail]

Copyright © 2023 Glen Brown

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution, or by any informational storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023902873

ISBNs:

978-1-7372855-8-8 (hardcover)

978-1-7372855-9-5 (paperback)

979-8-9877225-0-3 (ebook)

Editing: Robert Borta, Carol Killman Rosenberg

Interior & cover design: Gary A. Rosenberg

Author photo: Gary Adam

Cover photo: Glen Brown

For my wife, Marilyn Marie,

our children, Geoffrey Glen and Suzanne Elizabeth,

and our grandchildren

In the realm of feelings, the real and what is imaginary, assumed, pretended are hardly distinguishable

—Henri Peyre

Contents

I

Adverbial Paradoxes

Bartleby the Scrivener

Dillinger, Alias Jimmy Lawrence

If Anthony Weiner Had Met Little Red Riding Hood

Cinderella Dancing

Briar Rose Defunct

Snow White Turns 211

Riding Rapunzel

It’s More than Pheromones

Euclid and Barbie

Jeremy Bentham: Present but Not Voting

Hum If You Can’t Sing

Because

II

The Billboard

Peter Stubbs Packs Up and Flees to Chicago via Time Machine to Escape Bad Press

Ripped from Space

The Iceman Cometh No More

Paolo and Francesca

Gifts from God

Sanctuary

Munditia, Patron Saint of Lonely Women

Día de los Muertos

Double Vision

The Running of the Bulls Festival

What Medals Also Mean

Cain and Cain

III

The Day after Vito’s Tavern, Father’s Day 1957

Elizabeth Street

Safe at Home

Just Not Fast Enough

Jim’s Mom

The Devil’s Whore

In the Crosshairs

Suburban Lockup

Bubbie

Epitaph for a Transsexual

A Small Plot in the Short Story of Our Lives

Gray Squirrels, One Robin

After an Argument with My Father

Birth of an Angel

IV

Keeping a Net beneath Them

Hell

Have a Nice Day

Spilt Milk

Obsession

Not Quite a Sonnet on the Divisibility of Kinetics and Infinite Bisection (or a Theory on Yard Work)

Considering a Cat Crossing Highway 435 at 3 a.m. in Kansas City (or Death Does Not Always Have the Right of Way)

The Checkup (or A Symphony for a Dental Hygienist)

Don’t Ask Why

COVID-19 at the Grocery Store

Grocery Lists

Plaudite, Amici, Comoedia Finita Est

Without Pomp and Circumstance

Acknowledgments

About the Author

I

Adverbial Paradoxes

Yes

It’s the high five of words

with a swish of sound,

an affirmation of what is

and what might come.

In one small breath,

it can change us with its pledge.

Its covenant, sometimes superstitious,

like crossing one’s heart

or kissing the Book,

locks us to the future.

Yes is the adverbial wishbone of fate,

an affidavit of hope,

washing, like a tidal wave,

politics into history,

geography into space.

No

We say it when all else fails,

and we are at nerve’s end.

It’s a proud word with an emphatic O

and said with light speed.

The exclamation bursts

like a dark fist from our tongues.

No is an unambiguous disclaimer,

shouting miles away from