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The
Boy Who Ate Worms
The
sun bruises the darkness. . .
A scrap of wind falls. . .
The hunger grows worse each day. . .
An ax in the bois d’arc tree. . .
with the grace of a fallen angel. . .
– Jerome W., 9th grade |
The
sun bruises the darkness
and the blood inside this boy, Woody,
in my poetry class at juvie.
So he sets stuff on fire and uses drugs
but here’s a kid whose parents hung him
like a coat in the closet for hours
before he could walk.
A scrap of wind falls
and he appears with a poem
he translated from a language he invented
complete with alphabet and sound
though he never spoke it,
only wrote in his room at lockdown
when he wasn’t eating worms
dug up by kids who dared him.
The hunger grows worse each day
and when he doesn’t show
the teacher says he shaved his eyebrows
for a joke. Then he cut on himself
to watch blood spurt psychedelic purple,
across the floor and walls.
An ax in the bois d’arc tree –
he was both ax and tree,
but no one deals with a boy like that.
Guards refuse to clean the blood
and the county ships him
to a placement home up north.
He became a Buddhist, I was told,
learned magic and made stuff disappear,
like he disappeared so many times
with the grace of a fallen angel.
I
am rain, blue and red.
They swarmed around me,
touching my hair and clothes, all 54 adults,
grunting or trying to pronounce my name.
When the wind stops blowing it lies down.
It feels cold.
Sometimes the wind sleeps in the air.
Two groups took turns on Tuesday
at St. Madeline Sophie’s Training Center
for the Retarded. Jimmy drew fire engines.
Bill composed pages of lower case b’s and l’s.
I dreamed about a baby horse.
I was brown, running.
Mike recorded the T.V. schedule. Kathy wrote
inside out as if her whole world stood on a mirror.
The moon is as white as an angel’s dress
as blue as a duck pond.
Sometimes the moon is there, and half there,
and the whole round moon there.
Marsi transcribed scripture. Nancy drew
her mother’s face with a pointy nose and teeth.
The sun is shiny like a dog.
I like potato chips. They taste like a bird.
They taught me to break an image open
and see colors poking out. Circles had smells,
frogs could fly. A touch on the shoulder meant
a poem was ready to leap onto a page.
I was ballet dancing
in a pretty pink silk ballet dress, pink tights
and ballerina shoes. I smelled roses
and dreamed I was in Paris France.
I could feel a man dancing with me.
He held me so I could pose, so I could dance.
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