Eric Fisher Stone
Winter 2025 | Poetry
Me Stupid
Oinking and squeaking in class, my lips
blasted elephant trunk eruptions.
The school shrink told my parents
my 88 IQ meant I’m too slow for college.
I barked through science, berserk as moths
slapping lamps with their wings. Later,
when I named all solar system planets,
a boy said: He stupid, but he smart.
After special ed, undergrad, my masters,
I might seem above my station
as the village idiot, so I never
quote Wittgenstein to impress
Thus Spake Zarathustra readers
at a cafe of Übermenschen,
intellectual demigods Bertrand Russell
said held IQs of 180 he also claimed to have.
Maybe intelligence is a stupid concept,
each sparrow a genius for singing,
multitudinous oceans jazzed
with the whooping tubas of humpback whales,
all who lived and felt, mammals, birds
and animals Descartes deemed
thoughtless, pre-programmed robots
without reason or awareness.
I too resemble a beast, a moron
counting with my fingers,
amazed by grass blades and Junebugs
splashing in my hands, owning nothing
besides the wild rabbit of my brain,
claiming no dominion to possess
the Earth spinning through night and day
while my heart jabbers, I love, I love.
Eric Fisher Stone is a poet and PhD student at Oklahoma State University. His publications include three full-length collections of poetry: The Providence of Grass, from Chatter House Press, Animal Joy, from WordTech Editions, and Bear Lexicon, from Clare Songbirds Publishing House.