Heterophemize

by Kevin Brown

Heterophemize
v. — to say something different from what you mean to say

You are my noun,
I set out to say,
my person, place,
and thing, but I verbed

instead, stammered
out adjective
after adjective, but spoke
so adverbly you

exclamated. I thought
we were gerunding
well, but you saw nothing
but a split infinitive,
separating to from be

together, misplaced
modifiers left us,
nothing.

A fragment.

Syntax and semantics stumped
me, failed to notice the lack
of a coordinating

conjunction, always more
of a math person, where variables
are solved for, able
to understand what x equals

and y,

where one
plus one
always equals two.

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Kevin Brown is an Associate Professor at Lee University and an MFA student at Murray State University. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New York Quarterly, REAL: Regarding Arts and Letters, Folio, Connecticut Review, South Carolina Review, Stickman Review, Atlanta Review, and Palimpsest, among other journals. He has also published essays in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Academe, InsideHigherEd.com, The Teaching Professor, and Eclectica. He has one book of poetry, Exit Lines (Plain View Press, 2009), a chapbook, Abecedarium (Finishing Line Press), and a forthcoming book of scholarship: They Love to Tell the Stories: Five Contemporary Novelists Take on the Gospels.