New Poetry by Robert Demaree

LINGUISTICS CLASS

1.

What must it sound like,

The idiom of our tongue,

If you have come from other shores:

Listening to tapes

In classrooms below ground,

Beads of dampness on cold cinderblock,

Trying to apprehend small meanings

(Preposterous proposition):

Run in, run over, run down;

Dress down, dress out, dress up.

Would it be the same

For someone to come on to you,

Or come out?

2.

Language, quixotic, carries weight

It cannot bear.

A boy spent hours in practice—

Tennis, piano scales, free throws.

Later he practiced medicine,

His sister practiced law,

Always getting ready, it seemed,

For something else.

At the restaurant

He thought of a bad pun

And made a note:

He also waits who only stands and serves.

3.

Language tells you what it sees,

So pejorative becomes

Normative.

I want to hear about people

Who are ept, couth,

Ruthful, clueful souls with

Shevelled hair.

Do you remember when we

Worried about creeping -ism’s?

Neologism;

Barbarism,

An ancient word, meant to

Mock the sound of

Those who do not talk like you.

- Robert Demaree 2012

Robert Demaree, a retired educator, is the author of four collections of poems, including Mileposts (2009), published by Beech River Books. He has had over 550 poems published in 125 periodicals. He lives in Wolfeboro, N.H., and Burlington, N.C.