How to Give a Lecture on How to Eat an Elephant by Jordan Hamel
"Despite myself & the myself I found in everyone else, I kept living."
How to Give a Lecture on How to Eat an Elephant
by Jordan Hamel
On the faculty hiring committee, I march,
demanding they acknowledge me
and my virtues. I tell them I am decent.
I never thought about killing someone
except myself, even then I didn’t do it.
Despite myself & the myself I found
in everyone else, I kept living, growing up
to becoming the world’s most singular professor,
giving my only lecture: ‘How to Eat an Elephant’.
Sure, everyone knows one bite at a time.
Committee, I’m here to tell you, nothing matters.
Trunks can be broiled to the consistency of salmon.
My ‘Elly Belly soft tacos’ are second to none. Listen,
members of the committee, I have been the elephant,
no, I mean I was in the room, when it almost happened.
Now that room is the elephant in every room I enter,
so stop asking me about my qualifications or why
I’m on the desk screaming. Soups & broths are good
if you can find a big pot. Ears are great bacon substitutes.
Hire me now & give me money forever. I didn’t do it,
but I really wanted to. Please, don’t tell anyone,
but the secret is you never really finish the elephant.
So many rooms have made a meal out of me.
First published in The Sonora Review.
Lovely, especially the equivocation of elephants, rooms, us. Artful, evocative, moving. Here, I cannot help but be a ruminant, dreaming of the drawing of the Little Prince which represented the entire misunderstanding nature of the reductive adult world: that the elephant can be swallowed whole if our biting can become unhinged.
The ending plea of "Please, don’t tell anyone, // but the secret is you never really finish the elephant. // So many rooms have made a meal out of me." Is so good! it adds to the desperate tone and feeling of inadequacy.