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This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... Down in the Dirt magazine (v100) (the November 2011 Issue) You can also order this 5.5" x 8.5" issue as an ISSN# paperback book:						This writing also appears in this 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback “Grounded” Order this 6" x 9" ISBN# book:

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Sticks

Andrew H. Oerke

The brittle stick was once the tensile twig
of leaf and acorn fame. Sticks litter and decay in the ground.
Sticks are fundamental to the great chain of being alive.
Examples include pogo sticks, canes, crutches. Then we have
poles for vaulting for track stars. We have sticks burled
and knobbed at the end for clubs and extra clout.
There are chopsticks, pickup sticks, sticks for Zen masters walking,
for training dancers, for fencing, for fence posts and thinking wands
and hollow sticks for making lead pencils, and fuzzed for paint
brushes, and split or branched for slingshots. We have sticks
for drawing lines in the sand, and there are many other things
they can be used for. How “stick it” came to be is not

hard to figure out. And there’s Abe Lincoln’s, “Let’s
stick to it then.” And then we have the nightstick
waved in our face, and here we are with “sticks like glue,”
“stick it to them,” and Shakespeare advised us to “screw
our courage to the sticking-place.” Then Shakespeare stuck his
pages on a spindle not a candlestick. “This is a stick up,”
and “stick to your guns,” “don’t be a stick in the mud,” and
there’s “go stick it” and “stick it up your ass”
and so forth and so on. A stick was the first spear.
Sticks are supposed to be fetched by Spot and you to
toss them. A properly crooked curved stick is highly
regarded in Australia for boomerang usage, and
Gertrude might have intoned, “A stick is a stick is a stick.”
How much we’d lose if that’s all there was to it.

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