#addlepatter

[clamsimmons]

Oscar Addlepatter’s Assuming I Die

Do not give my body to science.

The organ harvest is sure

to show the crop

has gone rot

long before the frost.

Do not bury me near my name

For even those who passed on

their finest features leave

after the holidays.

Instead of donating me to medicine

men or familiar faces

brush my bones off the board

like chalk dust

and hide my powder

in the gray

barricades of an eraser

and I will wait there

until I can be smacked free.

But sometimes when I try to sleep by the lake

where the snapping turtles

once gathered for water

in ancient times,

I get a bunch of bug bites

and I think it would be better

to be taken out with the trash.

.

[clamsimmons]

Oscar Addlepatter’s Sewer People

Like other houses

it has walls and a roof

door deliberately placed

near coupled layers of concrete.

I don't know who comes up with this stuff

but they must be geniuses

with a capital g.

Inside the place there's a chimney

that's like a toilet flushing fire

except

it goes into the air instead of swirling

down

into

the

ground

where the sewer people live

and toil in an obscurity

so thankless

and remote

they should be given a Christmas card

or first dibs on a bowl of uneaten fruit wrapped in plastic wrap

for sanitary reasons.

So many things go into a house.

Some would say dozens others insist there is no less than thirty-nine.

The issue

is so divisive

it is best left unspoken

like the foul play surrounding the death of our beloved chicken,

Cornelius McTibbles.

his body found lifeless in our backyard swimming pool

his swimming trunks and floaties tucked away in his dresser on the screened in porch.

And yes, we are all painfully aware of the sting of death

even now while sitting alone in the living room I can still see

the haggard ghost of Uncle Luther haunting the rocking chair in the corner

rocking back and forth, back and forth.

but now I must leave this house again

to go to work, again,

for the third time in as many days

[clamsimmons]

Death in a Pumpkin Patch: An Introduction to the works of Oscar Addlepatter by Clam Simmons

When I first met Oscar Addlepatter he was the only vegetarian in an online chat room for people who like hamburgers. Our backgrounds couldn't have been more different. I was a retired security guard with the golden walkie-talkie award for twenty straight years of blemish free timecard. In contrast Addlepatter’s professions seem to blossom and wither with every seasons. For a time Addlepatter sold yarn. For a time Addlepatter believed he could see the souls of cats and so he begin to find work as a cat whisperer. He quit the business when his cats Salem and Wendell spoke to him in a dream about his own soul.

But when we first started chatting he had just been ousted from an off-Broadway production. Addlepatter swore that he was let go for his anarchist beliefs about private property. It was a devastating blow to Addlepatter and he was forced to return to his home in the Arkansas Ozarks. He had no home and no job so he started living in his ex-wife’s basement.

At first he had to listen to tapes of Manhattan street sounds to go to sleep at night. He kept himself occupied with white wine and trying to develop a humane leashes for cats. It made for a long winter but spring broke unexpectedly.

One morning I woke to discover a frantic message from Addlepatter. The drama teacher at Ozark Community College had died. A tire brained him and Addlepatter couldn’t be happier. He felt that the door to a new career had been cracked and with a good performance in the interview room he could swing the door wide open. Addlepatter would later regret his excitement surrounding his predecessor’s death but he did interview well and soon found himself tethered to three courses a semester at Ozark Community College.

At first Addlepatter believed it was a great opportunity to nudge underclassmen seeking associate’s degrees towards a more daring approach to art and life. But the department heads at Ozark Community College were quick to separate Addlepatter from his experimental anarchist curriculum and guide him towards to a more traditional dramatic slate of musicals. Addlepatter complied but he simmered with self-loathing. His self-loathing would soon become the fuel for one of his most creative periods of essay and poetry.

It was a robust period but sadly it was cut short in 2010 when Addlepatter went missing in a pumpkin patch. County sheriff searched the adjacent Ozark National Forest for several hours before giving up. They were sure he was goofing but he wasn't, he wasn't goofing-he was a goner, no one knew where he had gone but he was a goner. The former Mrs. Addlepatter performed a small ceremony allowed Wendell and Salem to light two small candles behind the Yarn Barn and that was an end of it. Sure, nine months later two deer hunters found his distinct XXL green flannel. The squirrels had shredded it and used as bedding in their squirrel nest.  

The works that will follow reflect a robust period of activity before Addlepatter went missing. Contained ahead you will encounter a feathery and bold concoction of poetry, prose and meditations on anarchy. Addlepatter espoused many beliefs about life and art but none greater than the following:

We are all strays looking to share a saucer of milk with a group of equal non-enemies….