Popular Poems About Childhood

Sixth graders watching the Guiness Book of World Records'
longest conga line of dogs
because it's five minutes before dismissal on a Friday
and why not?

Two simultaneous responses

one from a girl
one from a boy

"Aww, it's a puppy choo choo train!"

"Yeah, they's doin' it doggie style"


Cusp of twelve:
the hold of innocence tenuous

against gale force winds

It was a thing at the time
in tourist towns everywhere
i aligned with it in Gatlinburg, Tennessee
the summer before first grade

my cousin Sue Rose
an old girl of 14
is watching me squeeze condiment bottles of paint
onto the fast-spinning little canvas

round and round it goes

as i squeeze pink and blue and lime green
Sue Rose keeps exclaiming how pretty it is!
for some reason this bothers me

I grab the pointy tipped bottle of black
wrap both of my little hands around it
and give a mighty...

There are fields in the mind      
     
endless fields stained in gold      
where I’d lay in the harvest,      
stalks erect beneath the sun      
listening to the gentle chatter      
of seeds shivering in their husks.      
     
Anglia grew wheat, and hops      
and rapeseed. Settlements      
built on boggy fens and      
Roman rule      
     
and so I’d lay gazing at the sky      
dreaming of coins and rings      
and treasures laying dormant      
inches below the soil, thinking       ...