& say, show me, and you begin

slowly, steadily, my hand

riding yours, a spidermonkey

holding on to its mother’s back, until

your fingers disappear inside

& my fingers follow. I see myself reflected

in your face, you smile & I realize

I’m smiling also. There is so much

I want to tell you. Once I spoke to my mother

through a long cardboard tube,

put one end to her sleeping ear & the other

to my mouth & whispered,

can you hear me? She was younger

than I am now, now

she will always be younger. Another hour passes, we open

the shades. Outside

a man in a wheelchair crosses his legs. You show me

a photograph, a group of children beside a ’60s

stationwagon, you ask, can you find me? My fingers

tangle your hair, trace

your skull, your face so radiant

I can barely look into it.

Notes

“Fragment (found inside my mother)” takes two phrases from Emily Dickinson (341).

“Radio Thin Air”: The title comes from a radio program that aired on WFMU, New Jersey, in the 1990s. Marconi is the inventor of the telegraph.

“Angelization”: The word was coined by Marshall McLuhan.

“The Robot Moves!” is for Esra Soroya Padgett.

“Two More Fragments”: Button Man is the title of an unpublished novel by Jonathan Flynn.

“Residue”: All worthwhile images therein are thanks to New York City public school children, to their teachers, to Lucy Calkins, and to all those at The Writing Project.

“You moved me through each room” is for Lou Krodel.

About the Author

NICK FLYNN is the author of three collections of poetry, The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands, Blind Huber, and Some Ether, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and winner of the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry. He is also the author of two memoirs, The Ticking Is the Bomb and Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, winner of the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, the Nation, the Paris Review, and on National Public Radio’s This American Life. He has won fellowships from the Library of Congress, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He teaches in the spring at the University of Houston. He otherwise lives in Brooklyn and upstate New York.

This book was designed by Wendy Holdman. It is set in Stone Serif, a face designed by Sumner Stone and issued in digital form by Adobe in 1987 and in 1989 by ITC. Typesetting by BookMobile Design and Publishing Services. Manufactured by Versa Press on acid-free 30 percent postconsumer wastepaper.