No such thing as private shame
for amputation's horror flick.
Impotent mobility becomes
a dusty trailer park with arching winds
that bristle mortal's body hair.
Heaps of sand-scored effort storms
acquainted with our carnal squalor
piling up like poker chips.
I ignore my leveled bones.
Denial's treehouse holds its ground.
Through passages of foggy goggles,
a four-year-old with radar eyes
locks on palm tree plastic limb
leaning up against the wall
like crossing guards of prison camps.
She goes balistic.
Scampers in the morning light--
atoms in colliding forms.
Mother buried in rainbow blush
of apoplectic urgent angst.
Tandem tantrum hiking up a chafing dress.
A voyeur's thirst with ghoulish eyes:
"I'm so sorry; she went crazy..."
Silence louder than her scream.
I placate outbursts of her chatter
just like smiles reverse a frown.
The little girl in unset clay of wistful curiosity
comes running up. Her concentration covers me.
Her mother yells: "Don't touch that thing!
Don't bother her. Don't touch that thing!
Or you'll be going to your room!"
Out comes candor's cue ball strike.
Lacerated innocence is never the stuff of PC art.
A child traces universal dragon shadows
lurking in her unborn words.
She reads her fortune in my fear.
"I wasn't misbehaving MOM!
I went to hup that lady out
and gwue her weg back on again."
by Janet I. Buck
