Category: Coming of Age

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On the Eve of Your Thirteenth Birthday

for Jeffrey

the last day of twelve
was nothing special,
you said.
you didn’t dress for gym,
didn’t play four-square with
the others. only walked,
you said.

In English, you wrote
a myth…about Gusano—
it means worm in Spanish
you said.
this Greco-Spanish
worm-god found freedom,
you said.
but he led his people
back into the
earth to rule the Underworld
and that’s why he will
be responsible for
the zombie apocalypse,
you said.

and math was about
interest, like money and
banks, you know?
you said.
and you have homework
so you came home in
a bad mood and didn’t
want to talk about twelve
you said.

so i hushed and got out
the eggs, cracked them one-by-
one in the bowl and mixed until
those yellow eyes are gone; i
rubbed grease on the pan that is
swathed in black enamel
from years of cradling sweet
batter…and i poured more
in. you at the table building
up interest when the room
starts to smell like a birthday.

and suddenly, you are there,
beside to lick the batter from
the bowl. what time was I
born?
you said.

—Laura Boggess, featured in The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press

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With My Mother, Missing the Train

With My Mother,
Missing the Train

She was always late. At the final minute
we’d run for the city train, which roared right past,
its line of faces scanning us not in it.
The world was turned to terror by the blast
of hot departing wheels. Air seized my mother,
crushing her flustered skirts into a flurry
with me there clinging. Hush, there’ll be another,
she’d say to keep me calm. No need to worry.
But there was a need. The speed of things was true
and rushing traffic urged us both ahead.
I wanted to race again, to burst right through
and make the great train wait. She never said
that missing things was serious, till I grew.
She held my hand more tightly than I knew.

—Helena Nelson, from Plot and Counterplot, featured in The Joy of Poetry, T. S. Poetry Press, by permission of Shoestring Press

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The Find

To me it is just
a cave—a bouldered space
held dark against this mountain.
To you, it opens
dreams of dragons, pink and green
as the dragon-scale shoes
I bought for you just yesterday,
knowing it would be too soon before
you came upon this place, only to find it had become
just a cave, an empty bouldered space.

—L.L. Barkat, from Love, Etc., T. S. Poetry Press