2 June 2002 | Vol. 2, No. 2

Thoughts While Reading Ashbery

by CHRIS SEMANSKY

Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev's brain weighed 4.8 pounds

on the cutting room table, a Guinness record.

Human penises, erect, expand to five times their size.

Is it that unusual for a grown man

to call his mother "mommy?"

At the mall, in front of perfect strangers?

Granted, the first lesson reading teaches us

is how to be alone, but how much

better we learn that in sleep

with everyone watching at once.