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  book-belly starving

  for pages fantastical,

  haunted by lost

  hungry girls,

  I ate red apples

  heavy-salted on the tomb

  the sleeping Victorian corpses

  below fed me secrets

  sentinel owls peered

  from a grove of old pines,

  all of us hoping, waiting on signs

  of the change

  that was promised

  driven

  My father first let me drive when I was twelve

  in the woods on old logging trails,

  only a couple times in town

  when he was over the limit.

  I drove in sheer terror

  never crashed

  not even a scratch in the paint

  he was proud of me

  and that meant a lot.

  My mother never knew

  that we forged a secret alliance

  in the middle of our

  Cold War nuclear-family meltdown

  so when it was time for her

  to teach me how to drive

  I faked it, pretending

  I didn’t have a clue.

  ante-crescendo

  My mother hit me in the face

  for the last time

  when my father lost his job

  lost us to the wildfire

  that scorched the dining room table

  burned up the drapes

  while bombs dropped through the ceiling

  You have to seriously screw up

  to be fired by the Church

  cuz love, Jesus, etc.

  plus plenty of preachers play

  out shame mistakes in glass houses

  so they rarely throw stones

  but my dad, he was targeted

  by petty jealousies and for dumb mistakes,

  they called him on the carpet

  and wiped the floor with him

  subtle, ceremonious excommunication

  bell, book, and candlewise

  Dad’s pedestal tipped

  over and he had a great fall

  and all of the king’s horses

  and all of the king’s men

  didn’t give a damn

  I argued with him about something stupid

  so confused that our life was in flames

  Dad told me to shut up, as he stormed off

  I stuck out my tongue at his retreating form

  just as Mom came around the corner,

  with a mean backhand and explosive temper

  she hit me

  I was almost as tall as she was,

  just as angry

  and much, much stronger

  we stared at each other

  after the blow, on the edge

  of annihilation, wordless

  combustion

  but she was my mother

  so I swallowed the lighter fluid

  and tilted my head

  until my face became her mirror

  like I said,

  that was the last time

  she hit me

  packing for exile

  We lived in the house on Berkeley Drive

  for seven years, long enough to sucker

  me into believing that was a home

  my mistake

  when you’re a preacher’s kid, you move

  around a lot, don’t get to paint your walls

  or tape up posters; the Church buys the furniture

  pays the mortgage and makes all the rules.

  Dad sort of disappeared.

  No,

  actually, he vanished

  leaving my mother

  to move us

  like Hercules, charged with cleaning

  the shit-filled stables of King Augeas, she wrestled

  a fast-flowing river for the dirty work

  refusing to carry the past with us

  she threw it all away

  stacks of hymnals

  her trombone

  generations of family letters

  quilts, handmade syrup buckets

  photographs that made her eyes bleed

  chicken pot pies from the freezer

  she threw out the memories of Christmases

  without tears

  the night she went on a rare date with my father

  when she wore a black dress with a white collar

  perfumed with Joy, lemon-tanged

  she tossed out watching the astronauts walk

  on the moon

  my sister’s broken arm

  me singing into a hairbrush

  she dumped out Grandpa’s search for his shotgun

  when he realized the electroshock

  treatment wasn’t working, she trashed

  camping in the woods, fireflies dancing

  marshmallows toasting over the fire

  the only thing we packed in the moving truck

  were our carapaces pinned

  like specimens to a corkboard

  IT, part 1—gasoline

  Remember the line in Speak,

  “And I thought for just a minute there that . . .

  I would start high school with a boyfriend”?

  Yeah, that was me

  for a couple naive days

  when I was

  thirteen years old.

  We moved in June

  four shards of a family,

  one apartment of burnt

  orange and avocado green,

  two bedrooms.

  I bought the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

  album with my babysitting money. The boy

  across the street had a motorbike

  he syphoned gas for it every night

  the trick, he said,

  was only to take a little

  from each car,

  that way no one noticed.

  He grabbed me

  once.

  Pushed me against a

  brick wall, hands greased

  with experience

  arms metal cables

  looping around and encasing me.

  I fought, tried to kick

  and failed, his mouth dove

  for my neck and

  I bit him

  until I tasted blood.

  He backed off, furious

  cried that human bites

  were germ-filled, poisonous.

  I said I hoped that was true.

  That boy tasted gasoline dangerous,

  but he wasn’t IT.

  My sour victory

  did not last long.

  IT, part 2—trees

  We moved to a new

  building a few weeks later, I

  made friends with girls who shared

  candy-flavored lip gloss and giggly fantasies

  about Vinnie Barbarino and the Fonz

  girls who introduced me to IT,

  the friend of a friend of a friend

  cuz everyone is your friend when

  you’re thirteen and alone.

  Broken children

  can see each other from miles away,

  the original mutants, X-kids abandoned

  to their confused scars and rages. I held

  his hand, enjoyed our silent summer

  swooping circles of bewilderment. Not romance

  but comfort, to have a tobacco-smelling

  boy, older, bigger, stronger boy

  walk by my side.

  Looking back, I think his life was a mess.

  Looking
back, he still scares me.

  Looking back, I wonder how many girls

  he hurt

  and if someone hurt him first

  or if he was simply a felony-committing

  shithead.

  And then green August, melting-hot

  days running out the bottom of the hour-

  glass, school time marching

  relentlessly toward the children of

  summer so intent on capturing

  every free minute, like flowers

  to be pressed between the pages

  of a book. We walked down

  the hill to the creek, far away from the heat,

  the trees our shade companions, the babble

  of water overrunning any need to speak

  we tossed pebbles in the water

  everything was so calm that’s what I

  remember the calm cuz I was safe

  and happy tossing pebbles in the water

  next to this tobacco-smelling boy

  friend,

  so when he turned to kiss

  me

  my mouth met his with delight, I was new

  to this kind of kiss and happy to play

  by the creek with this boy whose hands then

  wandered fast, too fast, too far

  like a flash flood overwhelming the startled

  banks of a creek that never once thought

  of defense, of damming or the need for a bridge

  to escape

  his hands, arms shoulders back

  muscle sinew bone

  an avalanche of force

  the course predetermined one hand on my mouth

  his body covering smothering mine

  I took my eyes off the rage

  in his face and looked up to the green peace

  of leaves fluttering above, trees witnessing

  pain shame I crawled into the farthest corner

  of my mind biding time hiding surviving

  by outsiding

  and when he was done

  using my body

  he stood and zipped his jeans

  lit a cigarette

  and walked away.

  IT, part 3—playing chicken with the devil

  Lots of boys at our school played chicken

  the shifting pecking order of coward and stud

  beating a dark bass note in the cold current

  of doubt that flowed through their hearts.

  One boy lost a game of Russian roulette

  for real,

  a revolver, six chambers, one bullet

  loaded, then spun so no one knew

  where it was hiding, the gun

  went hand to hand to hand, following the snake-

  smoke path of the bong,

  laughing, basement smelling of mold

  and boy farts, cheap beer, and the gun goes click,

  to the next hand click, to the next hand

  before the laughter fades,

  BAM.

  It didn’t kill him. He was smart

  enough to tilt the barrel at an obtuse

  angle, so the bullet only stole his memories

  chewed through his charm and blinded him.

  He was a quiet, kind fixture

  in the empty garage

  where we smoked between classes,

  sheltered from the cold,

  his black hair long to cover the scars,

  white cane in his hand,

  old friends standing guard.

  Lots of boys at my school played chicken,

  countless varieties of the game.

  The boy who raped me

  on the rocks by the creek

  got drunk and lay down

  twenty-eight nights later

  on a dark country road

  he played chicken with the devil,

  daring the car that couldn’t see him

  to flinch first, to prove him brave

  and noble.

  I didn’t speak up

  when that boy raped me, instead I scalded

  myself in the shower and turned

  me into the ghost of the girl

  I once was, my biggest fear

  being that my father,

  no stranger to gaming

  with the devil,

  would kill that boy

  and it would be my fault.

  But that boy who raped me

  on the rocks by the creek

  got drunk and lay down

  on a dark night to play

  chicken with the devil

  and he lost.

  I begged my father

  to take me to the funeral. I lied

  and said that boy was my friend.

  He looked at me sharply,

  my ice-eyed father

  my gentle-hearted father, he heard

  something in my voice

  but after one searing glance, he shut

  down the inquiry

  wrote the note

  got me out

  of school and walked with me

  to the graveside on

  a gray September day cut by winter’s

  promise in the wind.

  My father kept his arm

  around my shoulders, while I cried

  so hard I turned myself inside

  out, so grateful IT was gone

  and it was over.

  I did not know

  that the haunting

  had just begun.

  clocks melting on the floor

  I didn’t think about pregnancy

  for weeks, when it finally hit me

  I puked and cried, afraid

  that I was puking

  cuz there was a baby

  but the next day I bled

  a stormy river, so grateful

  didn’t think about STIs

  didn’t know what they were

  to be honest

  after I was raped

  I could hardly think at all

  because feelings hid in the closet,

  under the bed, shadow-cloaked

  and hungry, dark mountains

  and oceans of noise threatened

  to spill over if I opened

  my mouth, I was afraid

  I’d never stop screaming

  pain management

  My parents drank fury and gin

  when we lived in places

  quick-rented, half-furnished

  with couches and beds that smelled

  of strangers, the floors scrubbed

  with regret.

  A wolf, when wounded, retreats

  to a dark place, burns out the injury

  with fever, lies still so the bones

  can knit back together,

  or dies alone.

  But we were not wolves.

  We moved

  and moved again, being not-wolves,

  with our legs snapped in the metal

  trap jaws, livers pecked each night

  by eagles,

  my parents broke

  themselves on the wheels of time and

  appearances, drunk

  on gin and fury, they ossified.

  Of course I got high.

  buzzed

  giggled

  ate molasses cookies baked—ha, I said “baked”—

  by my grandmother

  drank music: Boston Bob Seger Black Sabbath

  Blue Öyster Cult Supertramp Doobie Brothers

  Allman Brothers Bill Withers Eagles

  Stevie Wonder Steely Dan Ly
nyrd Skynyrd

  Aerosmith

  Temptations Santana Genesis Led Zeppelin

  Fleetwood Mac

  landsliding through my bones

  sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow

  I drew pictures

  x-ed them, rejected them with a black magic

  marker, threw them in the garbage

  weed buzz dulled thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou

  the pain, verdigris skeleton key

  turned in my brain’s rusty lock

  I understood

  I could fucking see the connections

  ’tween everything and everybody, the

  four—

  no, the five-dimensional chessboard

  we danced on

  I scribbled notes in crayon

  messages in bottles cast

  into the sea of me

  then lost in the deep

  I got high to escape

  sat in sunshine, eyes closed

  wanted to peel back my lids,

  but I knew a girl who did that,

  dead-crazy high on smack

  (not weed)

  she had pale eyes to begin with, almost as white

  as her hair, so when she, dead-crazy high, opened

  her eyes for a staring contest with the sun

  the sun won

  and she couldn’t see too good after that

  but she got sober,

  for sure

  I kept my eyes closed

  after smoking, usually fell asleep,

  bored and stuck

  in hardening concrete

  up to my chin

  ninth grade: my year of living stupidly

  1. I forgot to go to class a lot, even for subjects like French and social studies that I enjoyed. When I remembered to go, it was hard to stay awake cuz I wasn’t sleeping good at night. At first I’d hide in the fantasy section of the library when I forgot to go to class. Then I met some kids who lived a few blocks from school and they were happy to share high afternoons listening to music with me, all of us pretending we weren’t doomed.

  2. Concrete burns are lethal. Sneaky, too. Stick your hands or feet into wet concrete and it feels like a milkshake. You’d never guess you were going to need an amputation.

  3. I didn’t have real friends because a friend is someone you trust and trust never came easy after that boy raped me. But I had people to get high with, people to share sandwiches with. Sometimes I had people to walk with in the halls. Being mocked doesn’t hurt as much when someone walks next to you. I was grateful for my almost-friends.