260 Childhood poems

When I was twelve, I wanted a macaw but they cost hundreds of dollars. If we win the lottery? I asked. Macaws weren’t known to be great talkers, but they were affectionate. Yes, my mother said.If we win the lottery. I was satisfied, so long as it wasn’t impossible. The macaw would be blue.

Last night when I was sound asleep, My little brother Keith Tiptoed into my bedroom And pulled out all my teeth. You’d think that I would be upset And jump and spit and swear. You’d think that I would tackle Keith And pull out all his hair. But no!   I’m glad he did it. So what if people stare. Now, thanks to the Tooth Fairy, I’ll be a millionaire!

For Rosalie Richardson I am a tornado child. I come like a swirl of black and darken up your day; I whip it all into my womb, lift you and your things, carry you to where you've never been, and maybe, if I feel good, I might bring you back, all warm and scared, heart humming wild like a bird after early sudden flight. I am a tornado child. I tremble at the elements. When thunder rolls my womb trembles, remembering the tweak of contractions that tightened to a wail when my mother pushed me out into the black of a tornado night. I am a tornado child, you can tell us from far, by the crazy of our hair; couldn't tame it if we tried. Even now I tie a bandanna to silence the din of anarchy in these coir-thick plaits. I am a tornado child born in the whirl of clouds; the center crumbled, then I came. My lovers know the blast of my chaotic giving; they tremble at the whip of my supple thighs; you cross me at your peril, I swallow light when the warm of anger lashes me into a spin, the pine trees bend to me swept in my gyrations. I am a tornado child. When the spirit takes my head, I hurtle into the vacuum of white sheets billowing and paint a swirl of color, streaked with my many songs.

In the back of the charm-box, in a sack, the baby canines and incisors are mostly chaff, by now, split kernels and acicular down, no whole utensils left: half an adz; half a shovel, in its broken handle a marrow well of the will to dig and bite. And the enamel hems are sharp as shell-tools, and the colors go from salt, to bone, to pee on snow, to sun on pond-ice embedded with twigs and chipped-off skate-blade. One cuspid is like the tail of an ivory chough on my grandmother's what-not in a gravure on my mother's bureau in my father's house in my head, I think it's our daughter's, but the dime Hermes mingled the deciduals of our girl and boy, safe- keeping them together with the note that says Dear Toth Farry, Plees Giv Me A Bag of Moany

One son plays monster rage. His brother plays ship crashed in a maze. We are reading Hulk. We are reading Theseus. White sails, green men, bright women who give everything and get nothing. The monster son would never sail a ship into a maze, but brothers are not the same. They hear the same stories and make different toys of them, muscled figures in their fists, walls of wood and magnets. Who knows why a part of me always departs this place, glides out the window to rain and falling leaves, dresses of wetness and gold. She floats there, blessed by air, but when she tries to slip back in, she can’t; she hangs beyond the glass, panicked, then bulging with fury. Days later another part of me flies, into a maple the color of platelets, and another into bareness and sky. I’ve lost count of how many fists are now pounding my house, how many mouths are braying how many cries, but here inside, for now, my dear sons call to me for their fallen castles, built again, to find all the missing arrows.

My little Son, who look'd from thoughtful eyes And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise, Having my law the seventh time disobey'd, I struck him, and dismiss'd With hard words and unkiss'd, His Mother, who was patient, being dead. Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep, I visited his bed, But found him slumbering deep, With darken'd eyelids, and their lashes yet From his late sobbing wet. And I, with moan, Kissing away his tears, left others of my own; For, on a table drawn beside his head, He had put, within his reach, A box of counters and a red-vein'd stone, A piece of glass abraded by the beach And six or seven shells, A bottle with bluebells And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art, To comfort his sad heart. So when that night I pray'd To God, I wept, and said: Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath, Not vexing Thee in death, And Thou rememberest of what toys We made our joys, How weakly understood Thy great commanded good, Then, fatherly not less Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay, Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say, "I will be sorry for their childishness."

The boy and the girl were mostly gesture, a clouded outline, the pencil lifting, lowering to get at the idea of childhood, not the sour milk and scraped knee of it. Her skirt was a swoop of ink, his hand invisible in an undrawn pocket. Circles make up the majority of the face. We are all circles and planar suggestion. If  the girl wants to be a horse she need only walk into the outline of one and line up her body with the chest. We’ll fill in the rest, and before you know it, she’s a natural. Who will ride her? The boy doesn’t know how. He has a hankering to sketch in a saddle. When she tosses her head, he mocks up a bridle. He mocks her. A bridle for a bride, he says, which doesn’t seem like what little boys say, but he wasn’t so little, and she didn’t run away.

My father gets quite mad at me; my mother gets upset— when they catch me watching our new television set. My father yells, “Turn that thing off!” Mom says, “It’s time to study.” I’d rather watch my favorite TV show with my best buddy. I sneak down after homework and turn the set on low. But when she sees me watching it, my mother yells out, “No!” Dad says, “If you don’t turn it off, I’ll hang it from a tree!” I rather doubt he’ll do it, ’cause he watches more than me. He watches sports all weekend, and weekday evenings too, while munching chips and pretzels— the room looks like a zoo. So if he ever got the nerve to hang it from a tree, he’d spend a lot of time up there— watching it with me.

The first story I ever write is a bright crayon picture of a dancing tree, the branches tossed by island wind. I draw myself standing beside the tree, with a colorful parrot soaring above me, and a magical turtle clasped in my hand, and two yellow wings fluttering on the proud shoulders of my ruffled Cuban rumba dancer's fancy dress. In my California kindergarten class, the teacher scolds me: REAL TREES DON'T LOOK LIKE THAT. It's the moment when I first begin to learn that teachers can be wrong. They have never seen the dancing plants of Cuba.

a.) When I was twelve, I lived on the grounds of a mental asylum. b). My Filipino mother was a psychiatrist, so that meant we lived in the doctor’s quarters— one of the three big brick houses that edged the institute. c). My younger sister and I practiced Herkies— our favorite cheerleading jumps— off the patients’ bleachers near the softball field. d). When I was twelve, I aced the experiments with celery and food coloring; they let me skip a whole grade and get right to The Dissections. e). I secretly wished my supply of grape Bubble Yum would never run out but I couldn’t figure out how to blow bubbles and snap the lavender gum like Sara could. f). We sold gift wrap and crystals for a junior high fund-raiser and my mom still asks Where are all the crystals I bought? and Why don’t you display them in your house? g). When I was twelve, I worried about the darkening hair on my legs. My mother bought me my first training bra— no cup, just little triangle pieces stitched together— and then a slice of New York-style cheesecake to bring home. h). Home. i). When I was twelve, our house always smelled of fried lumpia or ginger. j). We had zinnias as wide as my outstretched hand nodding at us in our garden. k). My school had to create a whole new bus stop just for my sister and me, and everyone stopped talking and stared when we stepped onto the bus each morning, smelling of grape gum and ginger roots. l.) Just who are these girls?