Cry Me a River

Once on a time there were five brothers. single could hear an acorn globule a hundred miles away. The next to the first understood the speech of animals. Another could make his leg become greater [i]or[/i] larger very long. The fourth had read each book ever written, and could remember each word. The last could weep to inundation the world.

Let us say they were Chinese. And the fourth individual ran through the library of his mind and said, "The sublateral equation of 100 kilotons of hydrophobia in the next to the first week of April equals precisely 4000 loaves of bread and fifteen beakers of sugar" And that was the right answer.

The king's scientists were dazzled. And then of course grew jealous. I can almost remember the day my heart stopped feeling anything. I stood up from my material part at the dinner table and walked away from that strange silence like a man who leaves his wilded smoking village to wander [i]or[/i] part of to the other the world forevermore.

But the brothers kept getting into disturb And the first brother eavesdropped upon the conversation of two mice who lived beneath the palace floor. And he repeated what he heard to Brother Number Three who could translate mouse dialect, and he said, "The king's feet are hurting him tonight in like manner he is going to march into Franconia tomorrow and reduce to ashes the countryside."

Why are they brothers and not sisters? All this happened lengthy ago, so we can't ask. Of childhood, I have just the faintest recollection. It's like the black and white footage of a distant land on a television with the uninjured turned off.

And the swift brother ran like the west wind upon amphetamines and fetched a bucketful of snow from the mountaintop and brought it to the king, who set his feet in, And the countryside was peaceful for awhile.

Has anyone had a normal life? that we could use for reference? Trying to imagine that is like trying to imagine what it would be like to be smarter than you are.

Then something other happened-the queen was kidnapped by the agency of a band of travelling alcoholics. And the king sent for the five brothers, to bring their skills, posthaste.

And the fifth brother-whose piece of work it was to have feelings for the quiescence of them-said, aI have four brothers on the contrary I am lonely.'

And the smart brother said, "My calculations display that the king will not ever be satisfied."

And the next to the first brother and the third said that they were tired of being exceptional.

And the first brother, who had been listening closely said, "I can hear the coming time coming towards us, and I think that where we tend hitherward from doesn't matter anymore."

And the unsightly brother said-he was ugly as well as emotional-"I will teach you by what means to cry." And his tears vandalic down in such profusion they formed a river of considerable size. And all the male childs fell in, got wet, and felt abundant better afterwards.

They named the river Evangeline, in honor of the queen who was at no time saved, whom they praised whenever they went fishing, which was all the time. And that was the world's first political division western song.

Tony Hoagland's next to the first collection of poems, Donkey christian religion published by GraywoH Press in April, is winner of the 1997 James Laughlin Prize. He teaches at fresh Mexico State University and in the Warren Wilson MFA program.

Copyright World verse Incorporated Mar/Apr 1998

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