Marine Boy

Did you hear about the woman next door?
She was attacked by a dog.
She opened her back door
and there he was,
snapping at her arm
barking at my pale hand.
They trained him to hate white people...see?

Funny how concrete can hold so much
The sidewalk steals all my thoughts
The blacktop holds it’s breath.
Like a goldfish with an absent bowl,
my world ended at the next street,
and I walked around with my lungs
full of water.

Mom...I can’t sleep
The room is full of giant starfish
and there’s a Portugese man-of-war
in my closet.
My mother swam in through seaspray and foam
and sang me lullabies of keys that talked
and pants that walked
with nobody inside them.
The paper clown danced on my wall
My life was in his legs
while my hands lay paralyzed,
stuffed into gloves.
I wished for a tv screen on my ceiling
to show me a life I no longer
participated in.

Did you hear about the neighbor’s bird?
It got out of it’s cage
and dashed itself against the walls
over and over again
until it was dead.

David Aronson
November 2000