The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/The Child
| « | The Mailer Review • Volume 13 Number 1 • 2019 | » |
For years I’ve tried to bury
the child in me: that last proud
barber pole I stood in front of
as a boy, the new housing project,
chain-lined walks, blacktop sweat,
poverty just a spelling word.
To rate responsibility, I’ve tried to rid myself of selfish evasion. It’s just as well that I move to Nepal! Someone believes, someone bleeds. A girl bolts screaming from bed, her hands pathetic wild birds, a wooden man plods from the house of his single mind. At such times, when the cover is torn off catalog comforts and nothing grown seems full, the child sliding head-first into home, center of a good idea, dustily rises, clear on the score, and the words that passed for life go in one ear and out the other, a naughty habit never broken. THE MAILER REVIEW, VOL. , NO. , FALL . Copyright © . Th