Moving Objects
How can I be so inappropriate? I think riding the Green Line to my therapist Simon’s office. At a writers’ conference I had unleashed my rage at a staff member. The director of the conference gave me an official warning like I was a three-year-old: if I didn’t behave, I would have to leave. What causes my rudeness? It’s easy to blame chemistry, genetics, or my parents’ upbringing for things. We have pretty much ruled out brain damage and other odd and sundry neurological disorders like Oliver Sacks wrote about. I didn’t mistake my wife for a hat. Simon rarely, if ever, buys my theories. But I guess that’s what I pay him for. I’m just blunt like my parents. Then it hits me: my mother had recently died and my anger could have been at anyone. I missed her. I always leave therapy thinking of what people say at the end of AA meetings: Keep Coming Back. Going home, I take stock of my fellow el passengers. Whenever I do this kind of people scanning, a Joni Mitchell line rattles in my head: A thunderhead of judgment was gathering in my gaze. Sometimes I forget where I’m going. Sometimes I wonder how these trains move so fast considering the weight we carry inside—sufficient to throw off something in the universe.
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Marc Frazier has published poetry in nearly a hundred fifty journals. A recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award for poetry, he has also been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and two “Best of the Nets.” His four books are available online. Marc has also published memoir pieces, photographs, essays, fiction, flash fiction, and essays. His latest poetry book If It Comes To That recently won Silver in the Florida Writers Association contest. Marc, an LGBTQ author in Fort Lauderdale can be found on his website marcfrazierwrites.com. X @marcfrazier45, Insta mcfj45.
