All children, except one, A six-cylinder Chevrolet & Peter gnashes his pretty white teeth with joy
by Phoebe North
[ poetry - november 08 ]
All children, except one
The mermaids have hot mouths stained blue
with sea-ice. When they pull you down,
press their lips to your neck, you can see
the pink blood blossom between their breasts.
Something's gone wrong. You're changing,
wasting afternoons staring into the low water
while the other boys fight their eternal battle,
wood pistols against plastic swords, oblivious
to the cold water that rushes around your thighs
when you wade in past the undertow, wandering out
beyond the knife-floor of the coral reef.
A six-cylinder Chevrolet
We hold hands over your gearbox or else I slide
across the bench seat to straddle your knee. Once
we retreated into a storm, your rear wheels fishtailing
on the ice to watch your ancestral home in covert silence,
our breath fogging over the windows. Later I threw back
my seat belt to draw a road map of saliva behind your ear.
The heater seared my cheeks and throat. You swerved
and swerved again in that white wide night.
Peter gnashes his pretty white teeth with joy
He was solitude, squatting on the red
enamel tricycle, squinting into
the searing morning sun. A tow-headed
boy. The only living creature. Digging
swollen boy-hands into clay soil. Building
trenches with a blue plastic spade. Black flies
were drawn to him. And white stars.
As he orbited the bright galaxy
of dandelion stalks, saw grass, bound only
by a force field of honeysuckle vines
tangled into a chain link fence. Precious,
precious, he was the jewel-toned beetle
that pushed the sun and even the ball of burning dung,
scorching the pink heels of his own fat hands.
