The Bully
The Bully
From John Lee Clark’s How to Communicate: Poems Designed by Kayla ArnoldThe Bully
Copyright © 2024 by Kaya Arnold
The Bully is an original typographic re-setting of “The Bully” from How to Communicate: Poems, Copyright
© 2023 by John Lee Clark. New York: W. W. Norton.
John Lee Clark is an award winning poet, essayist, historian, and translator. He is also a deablind activist in the Protactile movment. His acclaimed How to Commucate: Poems, 2023, reflects on the sujective nature of communication through a variety of poetic forms including haiku, prose poems, “erasures,” and more.
The change in others for ourselves
Foreword
In How to Communicate: Poems , John Lee Clark invites readers into a world where communication transcends commercial boundaries of language. Through his masterful verses, Clark explores the intricacies of human connection, celebrating the ways in which we express ourselves beyond words.
In his poem “The Bully” Clark shares a tale of conflict and friendship. At its core, this poem challenges the reader to reconsider their assumptions of communication and empathy. Clark compels us to confront the humanity of the the bully and the bullied, urging us to reconsider the interconnectedness of all human beings.
The Bully
We boys were marching up to Rodman Hall for supper when he stopped and I bumped into him
He whirled around and pointed at me and touched his lips with his middle finger and slicked it back over his head
I protested
He said yes you touched my butt
I said accident not see
He said not believe you
Before breakfast next morning he saw me watching Gilligan’s Island
He switched the channel
Hey
He laughed
Next morning he did the same thing
I said oh that better thank you
He frowned and pressed the remote
That interesting awesome Switch switch switch
Then Gilligan’s Island was back on and I said no no not that
He laughed and left Gilligan’s Island on
One time was in the shower room and a rocket of water slammed into me
Fire extinguisher
I couldn’t see anything except for a baseball cap
It was his cap
I laughed and said more more feel good come on
His last year I was still learning the art of the white cane
Sometimes I got delayed tapping around for landmarks
One night I was tapping between Noyes Hall and Frechette Hall and a boy offered his arm
I didn’t know who until under a lamp I saw a baseball cap
Inside Frechette Hall I thanked him and he smiled
A few minutes later Gary Karow our houseparent came up to me and told me that the bully was so happy that he had helped me
A week before he graduated he grabbed my bag of books while my nose was buried in a book
As I searched for it he gave the bag back and said that he did it because I wasn’t paying attention
His last words to me before leaving were you take care man
Some years later he drove down to Texas with a friend to help him pick up a pickup truck
On his way back alone it was twilight and still in Texas when he turned off his headlights
He steered into oncoming traffic
A car swerved in time
Another swerved
Then it was a truck which couldn’t swerve and that baseball cap
Colophon
This book is designed by Kayla Arnold. It was edited and set into type in the United Stated of America, and was printed and bound by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.
The title and first headings font is The Constellation, designed by Thomas Boucherie. The second heading is set in Optima, designed by Herman Zapf. The third heading and body are set in Georgia, designed by Mattew Carter.
