American favorites. Picket fences white, and yellow tulips. From beneath the nitrogen black of dirt and eggshells—the grubs and fireflies pushing.  When, as children, we rose Sunday mornings full of grace, moonlike angels landed.  Please catch us.  Hold us.  Softest approach in winter singing safety to us, grey woolen socks, and burnt the taste of custard flán. I was frightened, each apparition arpeggiated screams on triangles, tricycles, baubles on Christmas trees—fashioned of spike, wire, and smoke.  1976, I fell down a flight of stairs, caught in air who promised the world leavened bread.  No poverty.  For an instant I did not have a name.  

Naming the birth pain
call the bird before the rain
come whatever May

We shivered as the 1980’s government sought to anesthetize us with My Buddy and My Kid Sister, Barbie —affluent and clever.  Perhaps we were terrified and the world ate canned shit because Ron and Nancy Reagan chanted Just Say No.  That incomprehensible demoralization. Children violated by agendas, prepped for sleep, urged to see a problem where they had none.  

What is the rag doll
that sits low upon my knees
—mediocrity