after W.B. Yeats
Big Spring Park bred
With enough monkey-bar callouses to carry me to
Adolescence, when anxiety tried hanging up my hanging-on hands, introduced a
Callous harder
Than any metal thing.
But, all those years, panic’s knots were never stronger than
my body’s continual triumph:
taking another turn
at the monkey bars and mountains, climbing away.
In the vapid excerpt from the novel, in the calm and loving excerpt,
in the abusive excerpt from The Beet Queen,
Louise Erdrich replays an event in which two siblings
are mistreated by the environment through imagery and paradox.
Mrs. X is our English teacher who orders us around like a dictator.
The novel was written in 1986 and included railroads as a main means of transportation.
The details help the reader think that Karl and Mary were from back in the days
where crops were a major factor in living the 80’s.
Back then, heat was not supplied as much as it is today.
I’m scared for Eddy’s prom.
I know Chantal is going to look beautiful and I’m not.
First off they are in North Dakota, which as many of us know, means there is nothing of interest there.
The children need to get away from the town itself—the butcher of dreams.
I really do love Christian and want to be with him
but I can’t because of the cruel fact that he doesn’t know of my existence.
Today life isn’t suffering. Life is survival.
It isn’t the train that’s moving. It’s life that’s passing them by.
I.
don’t respond
to her text messages.
II.
late night, build a fort in bed.
proclaim: no cats allowed.
III.
control her diet.
tell her fish is off the menu.
IV.
adopt a giant kangaroo
who looks like a mouse.
V.
gentrify her tower.
give thirty days notice.
VI.
plaster her windows
with newsprint.
VII.
if you touch her,
touch the scruff of her neck.
VIII.
do not bare your teeth.
she sees this as affection.
IX.
hide her books
under the couch.
X.
bring home a dog
with a wet nose.
XI.
give her catnip
only sporadically.
XII.
keep spray bottles
in unexpected places.
XIII.
cover your fingers
in Velcro.
XIV.
cut her nails
eat her babies.
