David Kirby: Significant Pieces of Information
Did you know monkeys peel bananas from the bottom up?
Ever try it that way? It’s easier. Monkeys know this.
People know it, too, or at least they do now, but
they don’t do it. People tend to be set in their ways
David Kirby: Leg Day at the Gym
Life isn’t always hard, but it’s almost never easy.
David Kirby: In Praise of Chaos
Picasso says, Inspiration exists but it
has to find us working. The more you work,
the more mistakes you make. If you make
enough of them, it’s considered your style.
David Kirby: Sex and Candy
Candy is to children what sex is to us, because when
you were a child, candy is what you thought about every
waking moment.
David Kirby: Two Poems
Let us be like my friend Rick’s grandma,
who Rick remembers trotting alongside the car as his dad
drove him and his brother down the long driveway from
her house, tapping on a window until one of the boys
rolled it down so she could ask, “Did you get enough pie?
David Kirby: Inexhaustible
You’ve seen the photo: the marine
on the right straining like the statue
of a Greek wrestler as he hauls the flag
into place, the five on the left pushing
from their side.
David Kirby: The Strangest Man
Einstein described
Dirac as “balancing on the dizzy path between
genius and madness,” and Niels Bohr said
Dirac was simply “the strangest man.”
David Kirby: Shorty Boudreaux
He really was short.
He’d get on a box and disappear under the hood
and jump down half an hour later,
grinning and wiping his hands on a rag,
and ask me about school.
David Kirby: Whatever Happened to Bobby Dunbar?
26 people
were killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre,
among them a first grader whose father was later
confronted by a man who said it was all a hoax
David Kirby: Mandela
When Nelson Mandela was released from prison,
no one had seen him in public since 1962,
so his followers were shocked to see
a stooped old man with white hair
David Kirby: Ode to Asparagus
O wonder! O brave new world, that has such vegetables in it.
David Kirby: That Happened Sometimes
Frank’s grandmother
and great-grandmother would cook pounds
and pounds of pasta al pomodoro every week
and bring it to the Italian prisoners of war
at Camp Belle Mead, New Jersey.
David Kirby: My Sunday
My Sunday is doing great
it’s driving along at 35 mph with its sleeves rolled up
and one arm out the window
dog with its head out the window barking at nothing
