Travis Brown

What Was Shaken from the Children, the Whole Lumpy Lot of Us

  1. Mostly, whole genres of handheld doodad and government-issue cheese brick. Sometimes the sense of awe came back, but it was shaken away once more. Whosoever saw amber waves also saw that they were waving haphazardly on the horizon where a pile of piano fed the old bonfire that was lapping at the sky like a diminishing lollipop. We fell in love and we broke our clavicles. We slipped from the harness and then we tried fixing the antennae on the rooftop of our incompetence and that was when the last of the money was shaken from our pockets. As reported, the newscasters had taken our parents’ places, and now they were fielding the sticky questions: Guess what Dad? I’m not sure who I am anymore. Why is this cliff so precipitous? The video responded, it reeled and looped without end: a montage of heavily-armed commandoes repeatedly scaling the face of a glacier. Our eyesight confused, crippled, we sat still. The elders from who-knows-where, they had come over to our houses and they were teaching us to tie a bunny ear again. Name-trees and faith-books, such unaccountable things shook loose from our shoes that finally we just chose to live among our many questions. How, says the sycamore. Why, says the fir. When, says what we’re headed for.