he cast a spell over us

he spoke to another
part of our brain
he leapt out like a jester
& continued to
confound us

The Lab Rat

A man cried out from the bottom of a chasm. He was trapped in a

glass flask. In his tiny state he was observed by scientists of the ridiculous.

Had the man been of normal size, had he been equal to his observers, their

studious regard would be replaced by alarm. Security would be called. The

man would be escorted into a police car.

The laboratory was situated in a prominent university. Scant concern

was given to subjects through a humanist lens. Such a lens was outdated.

That is to say, the man was objectively inferior. The man had the status of a

laboratory rat.

The man was subject to indignities and intrusions. Now—as blue

smoke poured into the flask—the man expected the worst. He cried out as

smoke filled the flask. He covered his face with his hands. The man dared

not breathe, though he had no say in the matter. Smoke seeped into his

lungs regardless. His stomach jumped and his brain spun.

“This is it,” thought the man. “Death by poison gas.”

He braced himself for pain. But his bloodstream welcomed the smoke.

His chest filled with the taste of country air. His confusion cleared, and he

was conscious of increasing lucidity of sensation and cerebration.

 He stood tall. He gazed at his masters, whose eyes and noses pressed

closer. Their faces crowded the flask, filling it with fleshy light. Parties on

both sides of the glass waited, eyeing each other in a subject-object stand-

off.

“They’re expecting something from me,” he thought.

So, the man snapped his fingers to the beat of an unseen band. His

feet went into wanton motion. They did a jig, a faux tap dance, tapping on

the glass floor. The man opened his throat and belted out an impromptu

tune. The scientists removed the cork. A bundle of wires slid down the neck

of the flask. Through the neck rose the man’s piping tenor, a snatch of

which one of the scholars noted:

remember that skinny kid

who killeth giants
& skinneth them alive?
remember then
us little men
with blood & guts
we overcome
you mocking brutes
be you ten times our size!

The next day the lab rat was woozy. He was splayed at the bottom of

the flask, with wires fixed to his skull. A tingle ran around the man’s

cranium. The man remembered dancing.

“I was the star of the show,” he uttered.

Piecemeal his performance returned to him. He had acted out the

heartfelt parts of Sleeping Beauty, Shirley Temple, Jesus Christ the

Messiah, Jesus Christ the Imposter, the Mad Hatter, Abraham Lincoln,

Adam and Eve, Abraham the Patriarch, and Isaac the Sacrifice.

The wires tongued deeper into the lab rat’s brain. The interrogation

began. It commenced with simple questions.

“What is your name?” said a voice.

The question sounded simple. Its simplicity perplexed him. The syntax

was ambiguous. You could march an army through it. The lab rat mulled.

The statement was a maze to work through.

“What is your name?” the voice said again, but with a variation in

intonation. It was a curve ball, to trip him up. What is a name? “What” is his

name. By what word is he known to mankind? What exists is what he is.

One word was the safest, surest reply. He stated the word with minor

inflection and with major confidence. He was bluffing. “What,” is what he

said.

“Where do you live?” said a second voice.

“I am here,” he said, pointing to the floor of the flask. “Ta dum!”

The questions were meant to befuddle the man, so they could extract

the marrow of his mind without a fight. So sinister was their simplicity that

the man could not begin to answer. He lost his frame of reference, and he

started to drown in questions. The scientists crowded the flask, each

learned voice speaking at once.

“What do your people call themselves?”

“What do you eat?”

 “What is your occupation?”

“What is your home made of?

“How many live in your home?”

“How do you choose your mate?”

“What do children learn?”

“What do old people do?”

“What happens after you die?”

“What do you worship?

“How was the world made?”

“Where do the seasons come from?”

“How do plants grow?”

“What is beyond the sky?

The interrogation went on. He did not know what he was saying. He

was saying anything. He quoted the Torah, I Love Lucy, Gilligan’s Island, “I

Wanna Hold Your Hand,” Adam’s Rib, Planet of the Apes, The Glass

Menagerie, and “The Gettysburg Address.”

In the midst of his gibberish, the lab rat was enlightened. His

examiners did not desire facts. They were looking for something hidden.

The scientists’ eyes gleamed like pirates.

A light came to his own eyes. He gazed at his questioners, no longer

trying to respond. He looked up, knowingly. Their gazes exchanged

meaning.
 The scientists sought to instill a ridiculousness in him. They were

looking for the combination that would twist him for good. Then they would

release him. Then they would send him back to his burrow. He would return

to his people with a sick seed planted in his speech. He would act as a

contagion. He understood the situation.

The wires on his head went pop like parting kisses. The bundle of

wires slid up the flask. A hand grasped its neck, and another cupped its

bottom. The flask was held aloft. It was carried across the laboratory. The

man flew over tables of glass and steel. The flask stopped and was held

high. In both directions the man saw hundreds of flasks, rows and rows of

them. In each flask he saw himself, his own kind, awaiting indoctrination.