JON DAVIS
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      Commencement Address:
      The Institute of Convoluted Speech

                  “It is a great & misbegotten pleasure
                  to be wilting here among you,
                  the sandwashed sons & daughters
                  of the recently merged, here
                  in the torpor, in the kindled rash
                  of August, along the sand-raddled
                  banks of the Gitahoolie, that nameless,
                  time-encrusted squiggle
                  on the overburdened maps.
                  Let me begin with a brief
                  synopsis of the challenge
                  that lies ahead for you, the Institute’s
                  neotonous & yet gravid class of 2000.
                  First, there is the Formica of the Lost,
                  little-explored, but formidable
                  nonetheless. Then, in rapid
                  succession: The Festival of Poor Reception;
                  the thwarted bride with her macrame;
                  the callous preacher in the bean dip; the grifter
                  with a head like a calabash. And
                  the hoarse admonishments: Stow
                  and batten. Clamor and stew.
                  Grieve and stammer. Cut your losses
                  and heave sternward, mateys.
                  They are capitulating in the coffee clatch,
                  yearning by the card stock.
                  Ladies & gentlemen, here are your
                  calibrated vestments. Here
                  your discontinued items. All this, my children—
                  the cartoon vixens, the crenellated foreskin,
                  the swarthy G-Men & their pathogenic
                  G-wives—all this, my children—
                  from here to the dimpled horizon, from
                  here to the quadruple bypass, from the crapulent
                  to the untested, from the fortuitous masqueraders
                  to the fortitudes masquerading
                  as virtues—all this, my children, will someday—
                  bring the knockwurst! bring the jalapeño dip!—
                  will someday—hail the coptic savants!—be yours.
                  Thank you my synthesized drummers, thank
                  you my husky baby, babies. And thank you
                  my extrinsic cadavers, my mutton cravers, my
                  greedy unwashed, my halfwit Carpathian sidekicks.
                  Today is an important day in your lives,
                  in your parents’ lives, in the lives of your country.
                  Today is a grievous finnicula, a cavernous
                  sinkhole, an encrypted fiction. Today, well,
                  we all know what today is. It is, of course,
                  a severed hand on the chifferobe, a slandered
                  politician weeping in the vestibule. We all know,
                  each of us, what today truly is:
                  a flatulent gaucho, a convex
                  caravan, a fortuitous affliction,
                  a sweat-drenched Caravaggio, a garrisoned
                  battalion of lunchboxes. Thank you
                  for this opportunity to thwart
                  your earnest hopes. Go forth then
                  with your magisterial airs,
                  with your bloody slipknots. Go forth
                  then, newly inducted into the splendor.
                  Go forth benighted ones. I think
                  I speak for everyone here—your impoverished
                  benefactors, your goat-bearded
                  mentors, your avid creditors.
                  We eagerly anticipate
                  the gnarled vexations, the avarice
                  and spleen of your defibrillated careers.”

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