PANCAKE TORTOISE

I can stop my children from biting each other while riding in the Wegmans double-tractor cart, a machine invented to test the deadlift capacity and proprioceptive skills of parents trying out for military duty, if I sing the song “1 2 3 4 5 / 6 7 8 9 10 / 11 12” AND replace the word “12” with the word “butt.”

The reason this works, obviously, is the butt. When you put something clearly DIFFERENT in the place of what SHOULD BE THERE, we are jarred, we are brought to mind of the arbitrariness of “order,” we are taken out of our all-engrossing rhythms to see for a moment what is.

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When I teach poetry writing and the students run up against their sense of the imperative to “make sense,” (aka minute one), I often have everyone play a game where we toss a small Alpaca around (why should it be a ball) and whoever catches it has to say a word entirely unrelated to the one that came before it. Things fall apart really fast in this game, because half of the students are focusing on catching the alpaca and half are hearing just how hard it is to make a list of unrelated things.

Try it. Give me three words that have nothing to do with each other, or between which you can perceive no linkage. I will link them. [If you don’t first!] Here’s a set, and you’re going to have to take me at my word that I’m trying hard to make them unrelated: rest / fuse box / log.