2 Poems
Poetry by Nancy Lee
Sexy Kids
If you have anything close
to a nightmare it is the dream of feathers sprouting
from your tongue, plumes gagging
you in your sleep or the naked
bird-man frying bacon in a cast
iron skillet, pouring jarred
pennies over his burnt
breakfast. you wake to a taste
of copper and the clatter
of coins in your chest.
It is nothing like TV
with flashbacks and court
dockets. No repressed atrocities,
just memories made worse
with banality. Pedestrian,
unremarkable men. The gymnastics
coach at the Y who slipped
a thumb into your leotard.
The painter in Peru who
unbuttoned your shirt and took
Polaroids while your parents
read in his reception rooms,
his oily impression of you still
hanging in their breakfast
nook. The teenaged boy who
waited in a Sunday school
bathroom, made you rub
the hump in his jeans until
a mother with a stroller
pounded the door.
To admit this is to hurt
the ones you love. Blame
never goes where it should,
and your parents would smother,
heads foggy in plastic bags
of guilt. To keep them alive,
you subscribe to silence, pay
the dues in instalments at night.
What is the number one cause
of pedophilia? a man asks on a date.
Sexy kids.
you laugh because you see
it in the candlelight on his neck,
the bristle of hidden feathers,
the mark of a flock.
What movies of the week
never tell you is the difference
between knowing and knowing.
Only vultures poke their beaks
into soft shells, and still you
dissect the times you were called
precocious, still on bad days,
studying childhood photos,
the oily impression of a girl
stands in the grass in her mother’s
hand-sewn rugby shorts
and looks sultry.
Husbandry
Dogs in the gully are slow to rot.
Their corpses rigor, insects ripple fur,
my hands part a veil of flies.
Mongrels are no match for the gardener’s
light touch on his rifle. His devotion
to our hens slickens my heart, itches
in the back of my neck.
A boy and I scrabble behind the rusted
oil tank, its belly hollowed
like the dogs. We shade a magazine’s
waxy pages from the sun. His nose drips
a summer cold, his tongue pokes
a lozenge. He wheezes winter,
eucalyptus.
The woman in the picture sits
as I sometimes sit in my dad’s easy
chair, leg hitched over the cushioned
arm. Behind her, statues and trinkets
clutter a bookcase, a lamp drips
scarves. Her blouse gapes peachy
breasts that make my lips chew.
The boy points to her sheered
pelt, her thighs’ open sesame;
even in a photo it trembles
like an animal just trained to heel.
That’s what you’re gonna look like.
How will I master her languid
disinterest, slung angles and bored
eyes? Already it’s hard to swallow
without gurgling; and the prickly
warmth of the boy’s shoulder taunts
me to tumble on him as he licks
a finger to unstick the page.
To slow the blood in my throat,
blot the sweat between my legs,
I think of how the woman must
be old: antique desk, glasses folded
at her collar, knickknacks
on the shelf, the fussy whorl
of scarves. She is not a girl
in cut-offs and ratty flip-flops,
who too often imagines
the gardener’s shirt taut at the sight
of a feral bitch, steady hands
loading his rifle, snapping
the gun like a length of silk,
fixing to tie a wild dog in knots.