Poppies like blood on tissue leaning in dark dust
at the end of summer remind me.
Listen, my roots stretch deep into
wet, dense Illinois clay of memory
(a child quaking on September asphalt, woodchips strung in a sweater)
like dry fingers.
A pile of notebooks stand flaking in a bedroom corner,
I slash them with ballpoint pens,
force-feed them with worries, then shove them
back to peeled wallpaper-dust.
Later I will feel for variations in gilded skin,
use fingernails to make warm blood run
(those Band-Aid wrappers flutter like moths under my ceiling fan) -
I don’t like looking at my old pictures
I don’t like large groups giggling at jokes I can’t understand
and I especially hate gray carpets and
scribble-primal-child-drawings pinned
under fluorescent lights.