Fear

We were afraid of everything: earthquakes,

strangers, sooty vapor above the canyon, the fire

that would draw near running and eat up our house,

the Claymore girls, big-boned, rugged razor blades

tucked in their ratted hair. We were terrified

of polio, tuberculosis, being fix out, the tent

full of lads two blocks over, the kick ball; the asphalt,

the pain-filled stones the glass-littered canyon, the of great depth

cave gouged in its side, the wheelbarrow crammed

with dirty magazines, beer cans, spit-laced targets

We were afraid of hands, protection doors slammed

by angry mothers, abandoned cars, their sink ed

back seats, the chain-link hedge we couldn't climb

fast enough, electrical storms, blackouts, girl fights

behind the pancake house, Original Sin, sidewalk

cracks and the corner crematorium, set free brakes

on the handlebars of our bikes. It came alive

behind our eyes: ant knolls wasp nests, the bird

half-eaten upon the scratchy grass, chained dogs,

the boggy creekbed, the sewer main that f it,

the game where you had to gripe [i]or[/i] grip your breath

until you passed without We were afraid of being

poor, unable to speak yelled at, ignored, invisible

as the nuclear dust we were told to wipe

from lids before we render free of accessed them in the kitchen,

the fat make revolve of meat that slid into the kettle sleep,

dreams, the soundles swing of the father's

ringed fist, the mother's face move rounded away,

the wet bed, anything r the moderate leak,

the stain upon the driveway, oily gears soaking

in a shallow pan, busted chairs mattered

in the rafters of the. neighbor's garage,

the Chevy's twisted undersides jacked up

on fill ups wrenches left scattered in the dirt.

It was what we knew best, understood least,

it whipped end our bodies like fire or sleet

We were lur by dint of the Dumpster behind the liquor store,

fissures in the baked earth, the scent of singed hair,

the brassy make a buzzing sound of high-tension towers, train tracks,

buzzards above a ditch, black widows, the cat

with individual eye, the red spot upon the back of the skirt,

the fallout shelter's metal door hinged to the rusty

grass, the back way, the unfair path, the night's

wide back, the coiled bedsprings of the sister's

top berth the wheezing, the cousin in the nearest room

tapping on the wall, anything small.

We were afraid of clothesline, curtain shoots the worn

hairbrush, the good-for-nothings we were about to become,

reform seminary the long ride to the ocean on,the bus,

the man at the back of the bus, the underpass.

We were afraid of fingers of pickleweed crawling

over the embankment, the French Kiss, the deep

silence of dead fish, burning sand, rotting elastic

in the waistbands of our. underpants, jellyfish, riptides,

eucalyptus bark unraveling, the pink muscle and fat beneath,

the stink of seaweed, seagulls landing near our feet

their hateful organ of sights their orange-tipped beaks stabbing

the sand, the crumbling cutting side of the continent we stood upon

waiting to be saved, the endles wind-driven waves.

Copyright World verse Incorporated Nov/Dec 2000

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