Strangest Arcs
Strangest Arcs
The Number Taker
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-2:23

The Number Taker

pandemic poems, part 2: a poetry reading
“Numberjacks” press photo / Open Mind Productions Ltd.
The Number Taker

I hear my children in the next room
chattering along with their favorite characters 
in the videos they loved last week
and the week before that. 
“Numbers with eyes,” my son calls them.
Zero through nine, with eyes.
It’s important not to mistake them for numbers
without eyes. Because I know my children’s hearts
in and out of silliness, I can defend this
as if it were my own idea, my own need.

There’s a narrow man in a white suit
extra tall white hat, white shoes
white cane he swings whenever his theme song comes on.
His name is The Number Taker, but my children 
call him Ross when they are scared.
He’s a creep. He’s a meanie. He steals 
the numbers from their sealed equations, 
messes up everyone’s math.
He’ll take your two legs and make them one.
Five-person family? No, four. No. Three.
He’ll give you two hearts and more eyes 
than room on your face.
Turn a single teardrop into a storm.
Two lungs winnowed down to one
last breath, and zero 
is the number of words anyone has left to say.

When I hated math in school, what I failed to understand
is numbers are everything. 
And if we don’t stop this Man in White
that’s exactly what he’ll take.

Do I tell my children the world has become something different
than it was when we watched this show last week?
Or do they already know.
They wreck their own magnificent towers.
The rain steals their sidewalk art by night.

There is no such thing as apocalypse.
The Number Taker is only pretend,
a guy named Ross with an acting gig.
I take the stage as Mom.
I deliver my line. 
We are all going to be okay.
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Strangest Arcs
Strangest Arcs
Jessica Smucker's early drafts, outtakes, journals, raw & real, and we'll see what happens...
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Jessica Smucker