Sir Nose D'Voidoffunk

Abstract

Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk Thomas Sayers Ellis (bio) [1] That name: D’VoidofFunk. An expressionistic thing With do-loops And threes in it, Preceded by A silly-serious Attempt by Old Smell-O-Vision To cop Some nobility. [2] The whole bumpnoxious, Dark thang stanks Of jivation And Electric Spank. Glory, glory, glory- hallastoopid. Then there’s his funny Accent—pitch Change and delay Looped through Feedback, pre-spankic Self-satisfunktion. [End Page 75] Nose gets harder As his voice Gets higher. Nose won’t take His shoes off, Dance, swim or sweat. Nose snores, A deep snooze, Snoozation. [3] Syndrome tweedle dee dum. Despite The finger-pointing profile, False peace signs And allergic reaction To light, we brothers Wanna be down With Nose. All that! The girls, the clothes. Now you know Nose Knows when to fake it And when to fake Faking it. Waves Don’t mean he’s gone Or that there’s going To be a cover-up, Very Nixonian. You can’t impeach Nose. Where’s your court- room, your wig and robe? You ain’t Nose judge. Somebody scream just to see The look on our party’s Tromboneless face, That burial ground [End Page 76] Of samples and clones Jes grew. A nose Is a nose is a nose Is a nose, so Wherever the elephants In his family Tree untrunk Is home. [4] And that’s about the only tail Mugs can push or pin On him. Thomas Sayers Ellis Thomas Sayers Ellis, an associate editor of Callaloo, is an instructor of African American literature and creative writing at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He recently received the MFA in creative writing at Brown University, a few years after he co-founded the Dark Room Writers Collective. He is a co-editor of On the Verge: Emerging Poets and Artists and one of the emerging poets collected in Take Three. His work has also been published in Agni, Callaloo, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, The Harvard Review, and Ploughshares. Copyright © 1998 Charles H. Rowell