Corey Ginsberg
________________________________________________________________________

Peter Slepecki, the Weirdest Kid in the Third Grade

You were the only one who wore slacks,
purple Polo shirts with a Star Trek pin
stuck to the sweat-stained cotton.
You were inaccessibly intelligent,
IQ of 160, the kind of smart
the rest of us sensed enough to resent.
We mocked your tubby ass, your square haircut,
your Starship Enterprise Trapper Keeper with matching pencil bag.
Your existence provided an endless well
of incongruent absurdities, like the way
you Velcroed each strap of your shoes twice
to make sure the black nylon perfectly lined up, how you walked
with your hands by your sides, elbows robotically locked,
your cleft palate speech patterns stuttering out nervous commands.
You sat alone at lunch, savored
your two crustless egg salad sandwiches
cut symmetrically down the center, two juice boxes resting
next to an unremarkable brown paper bag.
Where are you today Peter Slepecki?
Have you rationalized away pre-adolescence?
What computer software programs have you written?
What bombs have you defused, corporations have you founded?
Or did you repress the third grade? Are you in the middle
stall of a bathroom somewhere, snorting
lines of coke on your lunch break, compulsively washing
your hands with the bar of soap you keep
in a plastic container in your pocket?

*          *          *

I turn the television on let it
flood my eye muscles with pop culture
bench presses but I want more
than commercials more than static
airwaves and prime time
placations what will become of the third eye
when the other two are occupied
with infomercials and microwave-ready
meatloaf will there be a new

sort of war like the kind the iron declares
on the board and the board mistakes
for caresses or will it be
like pea soup when the peas have given in
to the broth resigned to the taste buds
that devour their unpleasant
though not unfamiliar texture there’s a difference

maybe not but I adjust the antenna pick up
another two dimensional condiment tray
that will keep my thoughts away from the meat
hanging off each cold self bone groping the remote
it snows half the time on the channels I’ve adopted
and the other half is a blink parade

*blink blink blink blink blink*

Corey Ginsberg is a recent graduate of Florida International University, where she specialized in creative nonfiction and served as the editor of Gulf Stream Magazine. She currently serves as a writing consultant in Miami, and is looking for a home for her book of poems. Her favorite writer is Kurt Vonnegut.