re: childhood.

in reference to the content of my earlier post, i’m replying to the person i was at age three and tagging memories together that remind me of each poem.

once i got in truble:
i was something small, with a bubble in my hand. the soap smelled like paint or acid that rolled in circles on my back, making my head drop sideways onto the shoulder strap of a infant, plastered easter dress. i dropped the wand to my side and reached up into the dogwood sky, spotted with bright plastic canisters and zip ties from bread bags, my arm too wet, too sloppy, to shake hands with the twig that cut and broke my skin. the leaves like lassos, i pressed my lips against the rubber edge and drank soap until every word i spoke before i went to war was clean again.

school:
the dome was the staple gun that shot my legs backwards and clipped me to a sheet of sand. i chewed dirt and tasted plastic lunchbox latches. i was a science project, running from variables A through Z until the desk was my base
and i tagged it,
with capital god, some forty-six year old woman who went to college, telling me i’m lowercase and late and chokes me with the alphabet and asks me to throw it up in cursive.

fall is here:
the chains dropped from painted poles that hooked onto a seat we shared. swing like lightning. summer weddings taste so dry. the atmosphere swells with fever chills but the clouds and stars will never die.  the leaves, this air, the speed of life the smoke that whistled and decked the bride. interior decorator, some god, damn these designs, these sober sticks, these legs of mine. long like the time i waste sleeping in pine straw and chasing crickets down the aisle. i take a seat on the school bus while my mother and my maggie on a leash take a sink into the pavement of the street. i smile. fall is here, fall is here, fall is here.

lost:
an artificial shopping cart that made me feel like a consumer. i could feel my own expiration date as a shifted like salt water across my bedroom ceiling. dancing in the lap of being grounded. it hosted my dreams of god and old-people cars. dreams that threw dice over breakfast before it could pray. dreams that bowed their heads with little left to bless or save. i’m a sick dog and i’m looking for my future to treat me, that veterinarian on the timeline. i toss clothes and bears and blankets into the gate of the cart and tie sidewalk chalk to my ankles, like post-wedding cans, so somebody knows where i’m going. i pause beside the skirt of my bed and kick every box of board games until i lift this lid, this tea set, that cut time zones in the chest of my small hands when i squeezed the sugar spoon so hard that it melted into the same dust that i served to the world with coffee.
i made a map to the water and pushed my shopping cart out toward the sugar cane circle to drown. i placed my life in the child seat, fake like the plastic in its gross domestic product and statistics that make socialites and country clubs colorful and kind. dinner dates and the wine glasses they imported from the moon. mom and dad were sitting on the front porch, smoking a cigarette in the name of the economy, and asked me what i was doing.

the witch with the itch:
the witch is a fragment of a pirate ship. the spur that cut into the horses ankles and had him dropping dead to the ground. she picked up the saddle, easy like the gadget pasted to the bottom of the cereal box that three kids would sugar and milk and take turns for collections and fighting for elections. the war became an allergy that broke the necks of trees and weeds and dirt we used to brush our teeth, we starve backstage to eat front seats.
an audience of mazes. a coliseum filled with cages. the witch undressed her saddle and threw it on the stove. sure that every souvenir in life is waiting to explode.

not done yet. more coming.