Heels Over Head

The novel I’ve just read

was printed upside-

down. You say I’m a buffoon,

one too daft to know

it was simply held amiss, 

by one hundred

and eighty degrees

upon my lap—my feeble

attempt at humour.

I say that’s not the case.

I tried it the common

way, and everything

in the story was

upended. The dialogue

was English

yet it wasn’t. Sounded

like a bygone backward

mask. Satan on the

steps of Zeppelin.

Sweetest in a heaven’s

feasting flame. The folly

of hydrogen. There

in our every breath.

Someone in a top hat

had shuffled in reverse

upon the ceiling,

like a love-struck

Fred Astaire. But nothing

had been fastened

to the floor. There weren’t

any nails within this

author’s outlandish world—

not even Elmer’s Glue.

Yet all

had stayed together

till the close.

When I chose to do a

headstand,

at last it made some sense.

Nothing

is inverted

up in space. All of us

together

are a fleck, gasping &

adrift throughout

the cosmos.

We’re there

and do not know it.

There’s no need

to launch a rocket,

boast we've made

it home.

Try it for yourself—

I vow to turn the pages,

find you the

fluffiest pillow

in the room. One with

a trillion feathers.

Then scream

your bloody lungs out

at the end. Tell me then

and there that I am stupid.

Tell me there and then

it could be funny.

Andreas Gripp

April 15, 2025

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