Weekly Poem: ‘Using a Hula Hoop Can Get You Abducted By Aliens’

By Matthea Harvey

We’ve never taken anyone
buttoned up and trotting from point A
to point B—subway to office, office to
lunch, fretting over the credit crunch.
Not the ones carefully maneuvering their
watchamacalits alongside broken white lines,
not the Leash-holders who take their Furries
to the park three point five times per day.
If you’re an integer in that kind of
equation, you belong with your Far-bits
on the ground. We’re seven Staryears
past calculus, so it’s the dreamy ones
who want to go somewhere they don’t know
how to get to that interest us, the ones
who will stare all day at a blank piece of paper
or square of canvas, then peer searchingly into
their herbal tea. It’s true that hula hoops
resemble the rings around Firsthome, and that
when you spin, we chime softly, remembering
Oursummer, Ourspring and our twelve Otherseasons.
but that’s not the only reason (Do we like rhyme?
Yes we do. Also your snow, your moss, your tofu—
our sticky hands make it hard for us to put
things down). Don’t fret, dreamy spinning ones
with water falling from your faces.
It’s us you’re waiting for and we’re coming.

Matthea Harvey is the author of “Modern Life” (Graywolf, 2007), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book. Her previous books include “Sad Little Breathing Machine” (Graywolf, 2004) and a children’s book, “The Little General and the Giant Snowflake” (Tin House Books, 2009). She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and is a contributing editor to jubilat, Meatpaper and BOMB.