Back to the topic of detachment and dark humor, this next poem may be the epitome of it.
National Impalement Statistics
One out of eight deaths occurring in the home
or on picnics
is impalement-related. Four
thousand and eleven people die
in home accidents in the
over the past decade), so
that means 501.375 people die
of home impalements each year.
Two hundred and eighty-seven people die on picnics
each year in the
round off human beings!) people die
by impalement
on picnics, mostly by fork, but many more than one might expect
by toothpick, particularly
in the Northeast region of the country.
The denotative: sharp object
enters one part of body
and, sometimes, emerges from another part of body, often,
though not always, ending in expiration.
One loves
the exceptions: he who lives with the shaft of a golf club
skewering his neck
and learns to walk sideways through doors; she who lives
with a long sliver of ice, ever unmelting,
in her chest…The home
is a bruised and burning place
and it lives a worm,
and the picnic, the picnic
is eating on the ground
as leopards do
when they are not eating in the trees.
This poem’s detached tone comes from its reliance on (to use Professor White’s lecture) rhetoric over imagery or “made-ness.” It is literally rattling off statistics in a totally matter-of-fact manner. Several sentences begin with or involve “but” or “although” or some word related to them. The poem treats death humorously as it discusses people dying during picnics and an impaled-but-living man walking through doors sideways so his golf club appendage won’t smack against the walls. In this case, the use of the impersonal third-person (not sure of the exact grammatical term for this) makes the poem even more removed. “One loves the exceptions,” “one does not round off human beings,” “but many more than one might expect,” etc. The speaker never identifies himself nor addresses anyone in particular.
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