I have moved on to the latest collection by Mark Halliday, Keep This Forever, in which is contained one of the funniest poems I've read in a long time: "Tim Off to Charlotte." It nails the weird associativeness of one side of a cell-phone conversation and the spirit of the traveling businessman.
The lines are rarely end-stopped with punctuation or enjambed, which creates a delicious sort of surrealism. Have some:
Jim, this is Tim McCurdy, just getting back to you about the Big Boys project
Not sure your people are up to date on this
Just to be sure we all shoot in the same direction
Christine, something I didn't mention
The reason Herman Schmitt was calling
He said the contact person would be a Biff something
I'm thinking Biff? Where do I go with the name Biff?
I mean are we in a cartoon here?
If you could just check the database
It's just a zany, random, short-attention-span kind of poem. Four or five conversations with different people at the same time. It's America. And it really is laugh-out-loud funny.
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