.................................
kevin
.................................

"I was much too far out all my life,
And not waving, but drowning."
        -Stevie Smith

he lay like something fragile
    that shouldn't be
a porcelain comet in hospital sheets
    a beautifully damaged manchild
in a celestial mindfuck
    blonde lashes spattered with watered blood
chemically sleeping

it could have been worse

before this
    a baby boy in brown coveralls
sandy Einstein hair
    playpen confined
but so other-trapped here

and before this
    imp of the Wild(er)
all freckles and dirt
    and therapy-filling
stands breaking down on the porch
    just one more taken moment
in a necklace of them

so now he lays
    with lion hair and open wounds
and crystallized male pride
    babybrother
    sonpatient
and i watch him from the doorway
underweight angelboy
    sinews held with nylon thread
        cocooned in rage and Haldol
            asleep on the sheets
                marked Psych Dept.

 
.................................
memorabilia
.................................

my mother kept the wrapping paper
with my brother's blood on it
from the christmas before last.
a corner piece of holly paper
dried stiff and streaky brown
like fingerpaints on the white side
from where he'd put his arm on the table
where the gifts were.
she said she couldn't throw it away.
so she kept it in her desk drawer
with the gas money and the hospital bills
and took it out to look at it
once in a while.

she fingered the pretty glossy side
red and green and gold
then flipped it over
for me to see
like she'd done a magic trick.

magic would have made it disappear somehow
but i didn't say that.
i just stared at her wrist as she ran her hands over it
her whole, strong wrist, muscle-roped and reddened
from thirty years of nursing other people's children
thick and powerful
unfeminine.

 
.................................
Electra
.................................

Electra my love
my poor displaced girl
you make it so hard
to sit still in class
to stay out of the sunlight
to not check for Daddy
and evaluate

Electra my child
you can't think it so
wish but watch for the almost
that can kill a person with half a glance
a fifth of a motion
and a little bit of beard

Electra my dear
make it just a bit harder
i can't imagine why you push
but the strong ones often do
and one father figure lacking
is a father all its own
to ideas like brushfires
birthed here
searching prenatal databanks
for a reason to try it
for the one that matches
dysfunction is acceptable once you give it a name
Electra

my part
and the lines already said

Electra so complex
change the script

make an exception

why can't we tell them they're wrong?

.................................
Amy Soppet
.................................

 
Copyright © Amy Soppet
August 2000

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Copyright © 2000 A Small Garlic Press. All rights reserved.
Created on 1998/8/23. Updated last on 2000/8/25.