Ellen Glassie
Synonym

There is no one-word lie
like the lie of the word sysnonum.
With a palm-slapping cosh crashing
through the dictionary underbrush
it cudgels the other words
with the shine of its black stick.

-- You there! You mean
the same thing! Get in this pen.

Cyclone fence. Spit on the high boots.
[-- Who does it think it is?]

BigotWord, judges
and shoves them all
into the cement huts,
only that cakey dust
furnishing the windowsill,
workcamp trudging.

In the Unugly Hut,
Pretty clasps its hands
around Beautiful's neck and sighs,
its little legs swinging.

Gorgeous, its hair in disarray, is still disdainful
of their treatment, whilst in the corner,
done up in scarves, Fair pats Beateous's wrinkled
unused fingers.
Cute, flung in as an afterthought,
coughs in the doorway dirt.
It all goes well
until Synonymous, the racist sister,
gets housed too
with the plain peasant, Same.
Many angry punctuation marks exchanged
and Synonym's spittle flying
in an umbrella trajectory
and whacking the short whip
against its own thigh in exasperation.

You try telling Grief, hair-strewn
and grabby hands exploding and tears exploding
like stars, that it is like
Woe, who sits cowled
on a low stool with uneven feet
and moans a long unword.
Likewise, Happiness, braids down either side
and the pink shirt pleated,
will not forbear at its tea-party
Joy, rambunctious as oxygen,
overalled and greendirtsmelling,
who last time spilled the sugar
but only sat and made sugarcastles
out of it.

The fact is, synonym
is such a lie,
it barely exists --
all its soul smoldering in its snake-eyed sound
until it becomes its hollow shape
that only the deaf believe in.

<< Back to Issue 6, 2004