I.
\nBronx baby
\nswitched at birth
\nnot really but so it seemed
\nand so she wished
\nas father said she’d never been happy from the day I was born<\/p>\n
II.
\nLong braids
\nand onion rye
\nand the teacher who never
\nshould have been leaning against the
\ngym wall.
\nI wasn’t aiming for her head.
\nNo…really.
\nI wasn’t!<\/p>\n
III
\nI made four
\nwhich dropped to three
\nthen back to four…
\nthen back to three.
\nForever after, I’d say.
\nBut she might tell another story<\/p>\n
hollow doors really are hollow
\nand objects in motion
\ntend to stay in motion
\nand when it doubt, keep your head
\ndown, pillow up, shutters ready,
\nand wait for the light of day.<\/p>\n
IV
\nMa nom est MADAME GERRRRRRR Ton
\nthe voice said it, but the bulging red veins
\nserved as punctuation.
\nSo I skipped along…
\nand French and gym and science and all things that weren’t taught
\nby the teacher who thought i wasn’t good enough for her son.
\nI showed her.
\nBalance has never been my strong suit.
\n1980 may have provided the best early clues<\/p>\n
V
\nwe moved to Mars, perhaps in the nick of time
\nbut the travel has hard on 16 year old who just couldn’t
\nunderstand why half needed to carry their saucers in their
\nback pockets and spit in a bucket they were allowed to keep under their desks,
\nwhile the other half wore little skirts and love standing on the sidelines.
\nMysterious place. Though my 16 year old self would probably use a different adjective.<\/p>\n
Now what is it you know about me, really, that you didn’t know before –
\nbefore you had 5 stanzas about my childhood. What is it you think you know or thought you’d know if you asked me the question and obliged with a response? or was this really a gift for me?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I. Bronx baby switched at birth not really but so it seemed and so she wished as father said she’d never been happy from the day I was born II. Long braids and onion rye and the teacher who never should have been leaning against…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1066,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1066"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57822"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57955,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57822\/revisions\/57955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}