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Trust
such profound pronouncements on personal
disfigurement, I wonder if once
you were pretty, perhaps, prepubescent, a child
angry at adults who adored the doll
with all the bumps and scars on the inside.
did friendly hands, friendly eyes, friendly voices
chuck you beneath your chubby chin
look into innocent eyes and lovingly only
see a happy, beautiful baby?
struggling to stifle the screams, the dreams,
labored breath clinging to damp, dying lungs,
I wonder, when you were young, with this limp,
these twisted bones, did loving voices coax you along
give you hope?
Two Blocks from Home
I read newspaper reports reporting
underground cannibal cults exposed by undercover agents exposing
themselves to busloads of school children, and school bus shootings,
drunk driving accidents involving dozens of dead
underwatched children bringing weapons to school and I
wonder when it's safe to send him out the door, and to school
five years old is too young to see this world.
I hear radio reports reporting, television shows broadcasting
papal heads arrested for raping boys, daycare providers hiding the dead
school janitors with secret torture chambers
the trusted neighbor caught trafficking child pornography
and I wonder how they can ask me
to let him go out there
Holly Day is a journalism instructor living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband and two children. Her most recent nonfiction books are Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, and Walking Twin Cities. Her poetry has most recently appeared in Bottle, The MacGuffin, and Not One of Us.
Email: Holly Day
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