Judson Evans

Postcards from Bob

Ft. George G. Meade, MD, Nov. 4, 1998

Dear Non-Judgmental Judges,

All I ask is the right to make mistakes, over and over,
the right to make mistakes. Isn’t that what this country
is all about? I, who have been known (or not known)
to hide in plain site, salute you from The National Cryptologic
Museum, The National Security Agency’s “principal gateway
to the public.” The sign blurts “NOT AN ENTRANCE”,
but can’t trick me. I love to keep secrets. I memorized
the Secret Service code names for ordinary objects,
wrote my homework in private cipher. My first crush,
The Avengers’ Emma Peel, shimmied into skintight
black leather with mod industrial zipper even wider
than my neck to navel scar.  She let me imagine I might
unzip and search inside. Like frisking father’s dress suit,
opening its tent to find his white dress shirt on
its smaller inside hanger, black bundled cordovans
dangling to one side like a heart inside a carcass,
the tie, his shell casing cufflinks in their little silk sack…

moon-tagged silver maples
so good at hiding
the other kids stop seeking

Yours,

Back-Channel Bob

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Note:  This is part of a sequence of haibun that take the form of postcards. “They are written by a deeply conflicted persona on a cross-country trip and addressed to a mysterious couple identified only by the myriad playful nicknames bestowed upon them (“Dear Benevolent Geniuses,” “Dear Conscientious Objectors,” “Dear Ladies of the Canyon”), always with sardonic campiness,” the author writes.

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About the Author

Judson Evans is a full-time Professor of Liberal Arts at Berklee College of Music, where he teaches poetry workshops on haiku, haibun, and renku, and a visual studies course on Paleolithic cave art. His collaborative book of lyric poems responding to cave painting, Chalk Song, was published by Lilly Press, Boston, in fall 2021. He is haibun co-editor for Frogpond.

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