Anti-Doodles: a Dada-ist Game for Long Pandemic Afternoons

By and | 1 October 2020


Words:

  1. Titmouse
  2. Tit
  3. Mouse
  4. Formica
  5. Honeycomb
  6. Axis
Ornithology

A titmouse, she said, is neither a tit nor a mouse. 
A titmouse, she said, is never a flavor of cheese. 
It couldn’t, she said, demolish the roof of your house. 
It isn’t, she said, a honeycomb studded with bees. 

What is it, I asked: a bug or a bat or a snake?
A movie, I asked? A colour? A flavor of praxis?
And was it, I asked, a-prowl when I wasn’t awake?
And could it, I asked, untether the Earth from its axis?

She would not reply. She sat at the edge of her chair. 
and gave me The Eye, as hard as formica or chrome. 
What is it, and why? And when will I meet it and where?
Unheeded, my cry. The gloaming of nobody home. 

Alarming, unknown, it lurks like a loon or a lark
Unknowing, alone, I wait for its steps in the dark.

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