I couldn’t hear a thing
and that’s because I was the one
making all the noise
it was on me —
—Buck Downs, “soup songs”
for the kids at OT
on reading Bhanu Kapil in the OT waiting room
make your mouth noun
shaped now make your hands
open verbs make each
limb flex now against & into
the big gym the elephant
room now the platform
swing clothespins (wooden)
snaps zippers the invisibility
cloak NO STANDING ON
CHAIRS NO RUNNING
now NO MOVING
FURNITURE make your
mouth open vowels make
your fingers pinch an O
now what’s next lite brite
what’s next messy play
did you see the new york
times it said kids can
outgrow autism lol
on reading The Panic Virus in the OT waiting room
a woman kneels with all
the paperwork of a dx
spread out on three
chairs—over & over she
says their names she
says they’re twins—yes—
twins—like most of us
she ignores the sign
pleading with us not to use
cell phones in the waiting
room I position
myself so I can look through
the reception window & staff
door through to the big
gym for a glimpse of him
DO YOU HAVE YOUR
EXHAUSTION LETTER
she’s reading parenting she’s
laughing the mommy
wars are a joke once you
see the autism mommy wars
toy story (the first) is on & all
the boys playing on the floor
compare the state of their
broken woodys & buzzes
at home cotton mather
long after salem
became an inoculation
advocate & had his house fire
bombed a pox upon it
the note said
[interesting]
the way we
talk to one another as though through
the blades of a floor fan
medium setting
this word (
awareness of one’s
body in space)
& his explanation of the big bang
so that we are all made of stars
so that volcano is a verb so that
a great noise still
vibrates in our jaws rattles
around in our heads pulses
the windows down the thump
thump thump of air 40 mph
there there that’s the sound now
don’t drive faster or slower
let him be
interesting but not
too interesting
it’s a new
prayer I
wrote it myself
on prepping class in the OT waiting room
prepping Eckes & McElroy while
waiting & thinking about secret
languages & language
acquisition cold war
punk rock while our heroes
engage in airy persiflage
the little red fox is hungry
the little red fox doesn’t
know he’s in a house
privacies were the first studies
privacy rooms are temporary
private spaces for nursing
mothers I think when they say
architectural they mean it’s more
serious than domestic
when I say go take these sentences one at a time
otters eat waffles
hey daddy want big fish
please cheese in hand
early multi-unit utterances
the emergence of syntax
this is a wug now there is another one
not single spies but in battalions
on reading The Age of Autism while waiting at a piano lesson
I’m so glad this book
is available on googlebooks
so I don’t have to give
it the dignity of purchase
or library circulation
this is münchausen-by-poetry
on reading Uta Frith in the OT waiting room, part 1
the nodding & flapping bee
confused du & sie
‘we are what we attend to’
(what’s that from?)
‘our experience is what
we attend to’ is William James but
‘we are what we attend to’ is
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi but
must be a reference to James
anyway
we are what we attend to
on reading Uta Frith in the OT waiting room, part 2
a boy reads on
the platform swing while
holding a weighted
textured ball & a girl
rolls across the big
gym in a padded
tunnel both of them
working their asses
off outgrowing
I have an envelope
it says OT receipts
& the woman across
from me explains
the organizing principles
of her autism closet
a closet drama is
a thing & a genre
if you cannot be sure guess this
screening is for mother-infant dyads
on thinking about Fugazi & Nabokov in the OT waiting room
I am a patient
boy I wait I wait I wait
I wait I think about
the son in signs & symbols
for whom everything is
a cipher & all
around him there are
spies but in battalions
triangles coax & drift & we
are to anthropomorphize
them like the lamp in an old
ikea ad theory of mind
a great phrase I like thinking it
but I’m thinking too about
passing & monitoring autistic
bodies a phrase I don’t like
but think every day
on reading Hans Asperger [trans. Uta Frith] in the OT waiting room, part 1
you dream you are a little girl
overwhelmed by books & papers
she explains to the receptionist
that her son hid all of the shoes
today every shoe in the house
he left only one shoe out & so
they’re all wearing slippers
the receptionist laughs tells her
it’s not the first time she’s
heard this make a verb of me
I’m tired of being a frigid
little noun fabric tunnel
padded barrel sometimes I
stare at them & think they are
beautiful & worry the fairies
will come for them
Asperger hated kitsch
on reading Hans Asperger [trans. Uta Frith] in the OT waiting room, part 2
activities of daily living
when I hold
the pen to sign the progress note
the therapist doesn’t hide her
astonishment at my lack of tripod
grasp jumping jacks silly putty
when Harro called
a stove a ‘firebringer’
Asperger put an exclamation
point in parentheses he said
the boy looked as though he’d
fallen from the sky
(a splash quite unnoticed)
(something amazing)
& I think I know
what that looks like in a boy
on reading Hans Asperger [trans. Uta Frith] in the OT waiting room, part 3
of the word reciprocity of quid
pro quo
memory for digits
memory for sentences today
he would prefer not to
reciprocity specifically as to
pertains to an exchange
of privileges of mutual
dependence the exercise book
covered with big swirls
Descartes bereft after
the deaths of his
human & robot daughters
& the narcissism of parenting
where I am afraid we say
move your body this way & not
that way because this is how
we move our bodies
his pathologically avant-garde syntax baby
that’s brilliant don’t ever change
today
he would prefer not to
on reading Hans Asperger [trans. Uta Frith] in the OT waiting room, part 4
Asperger’s empathy
is evident even his
admiration (their language)
but they say Asperger
was himself aloof
perhaps he had
Asperger’s obviously
the way Christ
had Christianity & Marx
Marxism & me
McCarthyism but back
to Asperger I’m not
joking I think he loved
Harro & Fritz despite
their indifference to authority
& impaired social integration
but then he does call them
homesick aliens & intelligent automata
from autos self
on reading Elizabeth Bishop in the OT waiting room, part 1
she says to her mother
she took two steps
she took two steps
she took two steps
that’s her repetition
not mine I am keeping
myself from crying
by reading Bishop
from inside I hope to hear
no cry of pain
I keep my voice in my
mouth I become one
of them all of us
reading on our phones
she took two steps &
I would like to mark that
though I don’t know
her or her child
it gets dark I think of the woman
who wrote her elegant
name on the flyleaf of my used
copy of The Empty Fortress
I say to myself proprioception
is the sense of falling off
the round turning world or
something stranger can happen
or it gets dark a bit
later we were late
in ten months he
will be seven years old (he can read)
Winnie the Pooh is on outside
in Broomall Pennsylvania
are late daylight & slush & cold
& it is still the fourteenth
of February 2013
on reading Elizabeth Bishop in the OT waiting room, part 2
nothing clears a room quite like asking : do you want to hear what I just read about the history of autism? well, maybe : let me tell you about my placenta. but I wouldn’t leave. not me. tell me about your placenta. tell me about your homebirth. tell me about your c-section. tell me about your VBAC. tell me about your homebirth VBAC. tell me about your contractions. tell me about your transition. tell me about your active labor. tell me about your nuchal screen. tell me about your sequential screen. tell me about your amniocentesis. tell me about your childbed fever. tell me about your birth plan. tell me about your epidural. tell me about your cowboy anesthesiologist. tell me about your episiotomy. tell me about breech presentation. tell me about witch hazel. tell me about ice packs. tell me about your back labor. tell me about your colostrum. tell me about your milk coming in. tell me about your NICU experience. tell me about nursing your twins. tell me about pumping in your office. tell me about your bossy OB. tell me about your pelvic girdle pain. tell me about your precipitous labor. tell me about your prolonged labor. tell me about your water birth. tell me about giving birth on all fours. tell me about your mucus plug. tell me about your bloody show. tell me about stripping your membranes. tell me about your ring of fire. tell me about your hippy midwife. tell me about your clogged ducts. tell me about the first shower after giving birth. tell me about your mastitis. tell me about your sleeplessness. tell me about your sleeplessness. tell me about your sleeplessness. tell me about your sleeplessness. tell me tell me tell me tell.