Cassandra of Dyslexia
The King
Give me fast cuts so my chickens won’t hatch.
Give me steeples and red carpet in the skyline.
Give me protest and festivity in the streets.
Give me anyone but her and anywhere but here.
Give me a dirty brown Chevy with out‐of‐state plates.
Give me a stronger, more bitter, cough suppressant.
Give me ten cigarettes and a reason to dial the phone.
Stop giving me better narcotics to eavesdrop,
thicker sunglasses, more fog and smut.
Give me a reason not to go to work tomorrow.
Give me blood boiling in my guts, ringing ears.
Give me any sign or news to digest, tomorrow’s front page.
Give me a plan (unable to hear or see).
Cassandra
Give me calm, come and see figurative tornadoes hit
the mailboxes, hear the drumming of cars against one another.
Give me baskets of chickens (optimists) counting there? their?
they’re eggs.
Give me blood boiling in my guts, a swollen tongue.
Give me a plan (unable to read or write),
a plan to quiet policy, believably.
The Reporter
. . . she saved empty boxes and when she moved, and she moved
often, she did not mark the boxes with their contents.
She chose her dwelling based on closet space
and stored the empty boxes there.
Cassandra spoke like a list of ingredients,
unafraid of sounding difficult or irreverent.
She knew that it was not worth reading
about dyslexia with her short attention span.
But she wrote to her king uncoded, uncrypted.
Cassandra writes
Waht msesage colud cmoe thorugh misdeursantding.
I Hvae kwonn dylsexia thourgh lreaning Egnilsh.
Cfofee, bnaanas, grwonnig aothner lguaange.
Hgih pcenterage trehe, myabe tiehr
mnids alibity, saerches, fiurgning palce.
Mnay wrods lkoonig aikle, dotcors, tacheers aegre.
Danmed fool mdins taht cna’t tihnk aobut
Lesat two, to, too wyas to splel a wrod.
P.S. wtach yuor bcak. Casasnrda.
Front Page
And blood tells the rest of the story:
obvious mistakes, clever media, deaf ears
exposed, bare to tornado revolt.
Bare like the golden rule.
Bare like conceit, but bared proudly.
Bare like typographical errors.
Bare like the lapel pin of a dead leader.
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I really enjoyed the poem “Cassandra of Dyslexia” by Jason Hall. The first section,”The King,” is flawless. The entire poem, taken as whole, speaks to our inability to grasp the meaning of things. The poem explores the futility of words. In fact, the imagery presented in the poem has more power than the words, and this is intentional, a construct of a clever poet. The section entitled “Cassandra Writes” states the theme of the poem “Waht msesage colud cmoe thorugh misdeursantding” (“What message could come through misunderstanding.”) The poet is inspired in his literal take on dyslexia (though I think as it’s used here it is called dysgraphia.)Though the words are garbled their meaning is clear, or at least the word representations are clear. The use of the Cassandra character, who can see the future but no one will believe her, to explore our inability to communicate is a brilliant stroke. To have her character suffer dyslexia is evil genius at it’s best. Excellent, thought provoking poetry! I look forward to seeing more poetry by Jason Hall!
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