HEDGE DAYS?1981-1994 Except where reference is made to the work of others, the work described in this thesis is my own or was done in collaboration with my advisory committee. This thesis does not include proprietary or classified information. ___________________________ Natalie Ann Atkins Thiele Certificate of Approval: _______________________________ _______________________________ Judy R. Troy Jeremy M. Downes, Chair Professor Alumni Writer-in-Residence Associate Professor English English _______________________________ _______________________________ Donald R. Wehrs George T. Flowers Associate Professor Dean English Graduate School HEDGE DAYS?1981-1994 Natalie Ann Atkins Thiele A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Auburn, Alabama August 9, 2008 ? iii HEDGE DAYS?1981-1994 Natalie Ann Atkins Thiele Permission is granted to Auburn University to make copies of this thesis at its discretion, upon request of individuals or institutions and at their expense. The author reserves all publication rights. ___________________________ Signature of Author ___________________________ Date of Graduation iv THESIS ABSTRACT HEDGE DAYS?1981-1994 Natalie Ann Atkins Thiele Master of Arts, August 9, 2008 (B.A., Converse College, 2004) 60 Typed Pages Directed by Jeremy M. Downes This thesis is a collection of thirty-two poems preceded by an introduction. The introduction explores my use of myth as a way to craft a dynamic, evocative style; it also analyzes my ?mythmaking? as a way of creating distance between me and the autobiographic material in my writing. The collection documents fundamental experiences of childhood, real and imagined, and draws on various mythic traditions as a loose framework; these poems are an attempt to capture those strange and crucial moments when a child?s consciousness crosses into the realm of dream and symbol. v Style manual or journal used: MLA Style Manual Computer software used: Microsoft Word vi TABLE OF CONTENTS MY MYTHS ........................................................................................................................1 GIANTS ...............................................................................................................................8 INCARNATION ..................................................................................................................9 BIRTH OF THE GODS .....................................................................................................10 MAMA CALLED THE DOCTOR; THE DOCTOR SAID ..............................................11 SIBLING RIVALRY .........................................................................................................12 GODLINGS OF ALABAMA ............................................................................................13 WATER JESUS .................................................................................................................14 MAN IN THE MASKS .....................................................................................................16 WHAT WE CREATE ........................................................................................................17 GATHERERS ....................................................................................................................20 STORM RULES ................................................................................................................22 BETWEEN WORLDS .......................................................................................................24 PSYCHOPOMP .................................................................................................................27 INSOMNIA AND HER CHILDREN ................................................................................28 BIRDS IN THE HOUSE ...................................................................................................29 WITCH WAYS ..................................................................................................................31 NURTURE .........................................................................................................................33 DAD QUITS SMOKING AGAIN.....................................................................................35 SATELLITES ....................................................................................................................36 vii THE HOUSE ON RIVER AVE ........................................................................................38 SOULFOOD ......................................................................................................................40 PARENTS ..........................................................................................................................41 GHOST IN THE MACHINE.............................................................................................42 DOG AT THE END...........................................................................................................43 THE NEW WORLD ..........................................................................................................44 THE ONLY PEOPLE LEFT .............................................................................................45 TINY FEARS.....................................................................................................................47 MUDMEN .........................................................................................................................48 CRUELTY .........................................................................................................................49 DANIEL AND THE AWFUL DOG .................................................................................50 THE CASE FOR SHOES ..................................................................................................51 MIRACLE..........................................................................................................................52 WORKS CITED ................................................................................................................53 1 My Myths I want to create poems that are more dynamic in style and subject than my past work. I have had a tendency in the past to be literal and safe with poems about butterflies, caution signs, photographs: very American, spare, ?thing? poems. They were safe because they were arbitrary and unchallenging. I feel comfortable writing from observed, static objects, and I find it difficult to write in an evocative way about people or situations I am emotionally close to. With this thesis collection, I have tried to push my writing past the static and planned and to allow my impulse and intuition more control over my poems. To do this, I created a framework of rules, a kind of game, to guide my writing. My first rule was that I would write about my family history. I decided to write about my family and my childhood because for me these topics are very challenging. In The Poet?s Companion, Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux say that the family is a microcosm of the human world; it is through our earliest relationships with family that we learn about the nature of ?intimacy and distance, anger and joy, cruelty and kindness, isolation and community? (30). I would expand on Addonizio?s and Laux?s ideas about the lessons of family to include the themes of creation, destruction, living, and dying. These themes are matters of myth. The next rule was developed from this idea; I decided to think about my composition process as a process of telling myths. My personal myths are not mythtelling in the sense that Sean Kane would define it, as a sort 2 of intuitive dialogue between man and nature (15). They are not grand or epic, as in the traditions of the Greek, Roman, Nordic, or Celtic cultures. My poems don?t explain the world, or even one cultural concept of the world; what I have written attempts to explain one child?s world. When I was young, the world was a vivid and fascinating place; the boundaries between what I saw, what I felt, and what I imagined were fluid. As a very small child, I had no words for the things I experienced and absorbed. Instead, I dreamed terrible things?snakes and tornadoes and flying and falling. In a way, this collection of poems tries to approximate those dreams; they are another indirect translation of the thoughts of that wordless observer-child. It was important to me to try to convey a certain unnerving vision of childhood; for me, and I suspect for many children, childhood did not conform to the modern model many think it is supposed to follow. In ?Little Angels, Little Monsters,? Marina Warner notes that ?the nostalgic worship of childhood innocence [. . .] is more marked today than it ever has been,? and there is a definite ?belief that there?s a proper childlike way for children to behave? in our culture (45). I certainly agree with the modern cult of childhood that children are special, perhaps supernatural, but I have trouble compromising the ideal of childlike innocence with the strangely brutal actions of children; innocence is not necessarily a synonym for goodness. Warner says that children?s ?observable, active fantasy life, their fluid make-believe play seem to give them access to a world of wisdom, and this in turn brings them close to myth and fairy tale? (49). She goes on to affirm that children are closer to the grotesque and violent in myth and fairy tale than we would like to admit: children have ?never been seen as such a 3 menacing enemy as today [. . .] with all the power of projected monstrousness to excite repulsion [. . .] even terror? (56). My decision to treat my early life as a sort of prehistory-of-myself, to claim my experiences as supernatural and mythic, gave me room to create symbols, as opposed to simply recording or interpreting them. With this freedom, I could write about my dog?s death as a ritual sacrifice, or my mother?s insomnia as a symptom of godhood. I began to think about what I created in a very different way, and my poems became more open and wild. Re-visioning childhood as a mythic world also helped distance me from its characters?my family?in a productive way. Because I was telling ?myths,? I could speak about emotional relationships and events from a position of relative neutrality. Because I was telling myths, I could also create the most outrageous images I could imagine. My next rule was that my source stories and experiences had to be old enough that exact, cinematic recall of them would be impossible. The more fragmented the memory, the better; stories passed from family member to family member were excellent sources for my myth poems, because their details had already been greatly revised in the telling and retelling. The reason guiding my choice of source material was that I wanted to encourage my intuitive mind; I wanted to move past the literal sense of the stories and begin making myth. Setting out to write myths encouraged me to appropriate various techniques of what Kane would call ?literary? versions of myth (15). In some poems, I tried to approximate an oral style and directly address my audience. For example, in ?Giants? I opened with the suggestion of a listening, possibly collaborating audience: ?Let?s try it 4 this way.? In other poems, I opened with deliberately ambiguous phrases of time to create a feeling of timelessness and cyclical iteration??Before, when the world had no edge? (?Miracle?), ?At the end of the summer? (?Dad quits smoking again?), ?In January? (?Ghost in the machine?). Throughout the collection, people become natural phenomena; in ?Giants,? my father is ?flight / and gravity.? I also write the reverse, natural phenomena becoming people, in ?Satellites,? where stars and meteorites become human (and very normal) when they fall to earth. Just as the ?mythtelling in which relationships in nature were encoded has dwindled down to [. . .] superstition? and anecdote (Kane 41), so my myths began to give way to ghost stories and folk tales over the course of my project. In the poem ?Godlings of Alabama,? I wanted to describe the feelings of territoriality I had as a child. When other children were thrown into my domain, I sought control by outdoing them in a ghost-story-telling contest. ?Storm Rules? borrows a bit of its style from folkloric ?weather? sayings (like my family?s saying that cows lying down means either ?rain? or ?the fish are biting,? and the Welsh belief that tall weeds in fall mean a hard winter (Coffin and Cohen, 113-4)). The most difficult part of this game was following my last rule; I decided that I needed to change certain aspects about the way I controlled my writing. I can see from reading some of my older poems that in the beginning, I was too indulgent with my poems, letting them grow out like weeds with each revision; once I began taking workshop-style classes as an undergraduate, I began to control this tendency by slashing, burning, and staking my words. I can be a vicious and compulsive editor, which has some benefits and some very serious drawbacks. Since the initial impulse for the 5 collection was to do try things that I have not done, or things I have not done successfully, I decided that loosening my grip (without losing control) was a necessity. In ?Psychopomp,? for example, I experimented with blank space, which I haven?t tried in the past. In the poem, cats leave a room after a death, ?following an invisible??I deliberately left out the final word and punctuation mark at the end of this stanza. The effect is a superstitious pause, a literal loss of words stemming from the idea of death. While drafting the poem, I may have even intended to fill in the blank once I discovered the correct word for what leaves the room after a person dies. Leaving the blank makes the reader?s search for an answer, leaves them silently tracing the path of the cat that traces the path of the dead and disappears. Many poems in my collection deal with death, reality, and the imagination. Many more explore the contrast between images of pain, disorder, and ugliness, and images of joy, control, and loveliness. Because of these themes in my own work, I turned to Anna Akhmatova, Paul Celan, and Gary Snyder for guidance. They were my greatest poetic influences for this collection because I trust them as poets; their works reveal a perspective on the world that I find simultaneously starkly realistic and admirably magical. I turned to Akhmatova and Celan for inspiration about how to write effective, not-confessional pieces about intense personal experiences. Many of Akhmatova?s and Celan?s poems were written after (or long after) the events they refer to, but their retellings of the past attempt to capture and refine the essence of what was. Part of putting a history into writing is to make it what is; these poets reshape history and build myth through language in ways I have tried to emulate. I admire the way Akhmatova?s language whirls and dances and sinks with outrage and grief. By presenting her readers 6 with commonly held symbols and archetypal characters of loss, she invites us to hurt with them, and only tells us the strict truth when that version of events is the one which will pierce deepest. Celan does not invite us into his suffering in the same way; he builds a strange alternate world that can contain immense, incomprehensible pain in fantastic and eerily beautiful forms. Snyder?s influence on my own poetry is different than the influences of Akhmatova and Celan. I read Snyder for his calmer, more matter-of-fact use of myth; instead of creating new myth, he situates his writing as part of (and a bridge between) existing mythic traditions. His logging poems weave through the Pacific Northwest world of Bear and Coyote and Seal. Most of his poems have a meditative simplicity and humor that captures the graceful style of the Zen Buddhist philosophies he embraces. For Snyder, it is not just the major events of life that become mythic poetry. These qualities of Snyder?s writing were encouraging to me; I wanted to create a body of stories within a set of diverse mythic traditions, and my source material was nothing spectacular to begin with. His irreverent/reverent mix of the ordinary and the transcendent reassured me that what I was trying for was attainable. When I began this project, I wasn?t worried about the problems of creating myths out of my family stories?that aspect of the poems seemed like it wouldn?t take as much work as it ultimately required. Instead, I feared being unable to write a series of poems guided by a set theme. Because of this anxiety, I came up with all sorts of schemes and plans to convince myself it was possible to write a unified collection; I ended up not needing or heeding most of these tricks. What worked was reading my inspiration-poets, thinking about ?myth? and storytelling, and temporarily killing my inner editor (at least 7 until the words got themselves out on paper). I feel that I have done what I set out to do with this thesis collection of poems: I followed my rules, and the poems are more or less coherent and recognizably linked. Creating Hedge Days was very challenging for me, and I?m pleased that I didn?t back down. I?m surprised and gratified by what I?ve written?it really is different, just as I wanted. 8 Giants Let?s try it this way? my mother was a guerilla before I was born. My father was abandoned and raised by pigs. They made him spin lint into thread late into the night. Mom pushed the button that blew up the moon. She is the demon of dreaming. Dad is flight and gravity, throwing endless arcs of children up and out from Olympus. 9 Incarnation Parents always suspect magic. When I was too small to walk I swam. Tossed underwater, from god?s hands to god?s hands pink and unbubbling, slick as rubber I was the miracle of breath-holding. 10 Birth of the Gods Daniel and Tyslon My brothers, twins. Dark and light. Short and tall. Wine and whiskey hidden in a dented car. Caroline My sister was born to gypsies sold to Kmart in a coffee pot box bought as a blue light special next to the TVs. She sees things. Natalie I was ancient; when I was born I stood up and shook my father?s hand. 11 Mama Called the Doctor; the Doctor Said One of the babies didn?t survive. Mom spends time hunting dreams, keeping the moon in one piece and the fire in the dead stove at bay. The live children spook her, more than the ghost of her first. She searches their pockets checks their eyes for splinters. She holds their charred bones out to them over breakfast. 12 Sibling Rivalry Before Daniel was born, I was a god calling forth penguins to ride in my pockets. I hated him first, then Caroline, too. I became a tiny devil eating their plums, feeding them carrots winding their mobiles until they twanged. I taught them terror: snakes in the stairwell, monsters in the toilet. I tipped their chairs backward to make them scream, dropping them fast, catching them before the floor. They loved me. 13 Godlings of Alabama On grey days, unexpected, the godlings of Alabama would show up in swimming trunks sourfaced, shy, freckled, impatient to jump off the diving board. Rusty and Dusty and Buck. They always told stories, because they were born in a campfire. Bloody bones on the first step. Green Eyes. Soap Sally. So I told them about Sam, the kid who drowned in the deep end; he was only twelve. You can see his shadow at night. Sometimes he grabs your feet. 14 Water Jesus Daniel was the king of the river? slick rocks, sunken rafts? he hid in the sand at night, up to his eyes in tree roots and snakeholes. Daniel hunted turtles in the morning, crawling through the kudzu and mud. At eight, he brought a mudbug back to life, called it Humbly. It clicked as its clumsy feet danced it across the table. Mom had Humbly buried in a dish of congealing butter. When he turned seventeen, he spent all his time at Little River Canyon where the rednecks go to drink and break their legs jumping from cliffs. He went over the falls to save a woman; she bobbed up out of the whitewater like a twig, unharmed. Daniel stayed down, pressed to the bedrock, sucked airless by the cold vacuum of the river. 15 After three minutes he rose, met a hard-faced woman who thought he was dead. Daniel told her to fuck herself. 16 Man in the Masks Daniel has been the Easter Bunny passing out rubber bands and styrofoam and bags of rice in Mickey Mouse shorts and a rasta cap. He was Moses, with a wrinkled latex face and a shock of white acrylic hair, yelling ?who wants to watch me be sacrilegious to Dad?? He walked through the neighborhood booming ?I am God hallowed be my name.? He?s not a prankster, not exactly a liar. Maybe he?s the namer of types? Bighead, Streetfighter, Them Cheddar Boys. 17 What We Create Oppositional Defiant Disorder Daniel wrote a story about how good he was, how the neighbors called him Angel Boy, gave him cookies. A Christmas story. He added that he was the first real son, that he loved fishing. Then he framed it in noodles and beans, turned the whole thing to gold. Daniel drew a picture: Mom was a troll queen, Dad was a Russian circus bear. The slouchy bear: ?Should we go sass the boy?? The three-fanged troll: ?No. We?ll go to his room and touch all his stuff.? Attention Deficit Disorder Caroline told us the story about how black holes came to be in Wisconsin. ?Once upon a time an evil teacher made me write a fable?? She got a D in the class for being too wise. She always wrote behind secret eyes: 18 the story of how I taught her misspelled words, the story of how Daniel locked her in the bathroom. Conduct Disorder Tyslon could draw ninjas and cars better than any kid, with shading and perspective and proportion. He could do backflips off the front porch and jackknifes off the diving board. My new brother had mean friends. He stole things, but he taught us to light fires in the sink: toilet paper rolls, cheap army men, Barbie torched with flaming hairspray. He poured isopropyl alcohol into his palm and lit it. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder I learned to write between tying my shoes and refusing to sleep. I wrote a book about Spot, the best, most loved puppy, who dies on every page. Quicksand like grass, pretty poison-flowers, fat evil bees 19 lurking. 20 Gatherers Hedge days hiding in the boxwoods by the river in August sledding down snowless hills on skateboards and plastic trays, leaving tracks in the monkey grass. We played filthy games? attic refugees, ditchwater gypsies soldiers in foxholes of dense orange clay. We stole food for our Ziplocs wove cloth from the neighbor?s daffodils pulled their clovers to spice our stews. Then the older games, hunting, building homes, finding water our neon canteens rattling at our hips as we roamed from schoolyard to park, checking fountains and dead spigots for dust, anything but echoing rings of empty pipes 21 for cool, even hot water to cut the summer salt. 22 Storm Rules When you see the heat lightning, pretend you can?t. Mom will pull you out of the pool. But thunder throws you out of the water like you?re already electrocuted?try it. You can?t stay in, twitching and leaping to get to the ladder the sun suddenly gone under the bruise of a storm. They say thunderstorms can get in, close the doors, paint them blue, pull the windows to, don?t touch the taps. No mirrors, no phone, no TV and stay off the porch. We break the rules open doors to catch the new air, the cool air pushes out dog hair and fleas and the smell of hot kitchen, June-grease and we open windows, 23 we walk on the porch and feel the spray, slip on the standing puddles watch the potted begonias swing from the balcony. When the windchimes ring with a slam and the screen doors bubble with gray rainwater we jump at the thunder, count the miles between lightning and house Count the seconds one onehundred two mississippi three hippopotamus? 24 Between Worlds I Blue flash: grownups never see it, only us, only late spring only early summer, when the house stays sunlit late? so late we forget to turn on the lights and the air turns lemon and full of green shadow. Then the blue flash: always in the room you?re not in always late spring, you chase it wait for it around nine it startles sends you running. What is it only children see, what is blue and flashes 25 like electricity, like indoor-lightning in summer in late spring? II Children. It?s because we are so close to death that we see the ghosts. We are so thin- skin glowing, so fragile, that the blue lights flash, call to us from darkened rooms. The electric summer buzz and click of cicadas and frogs lures us into dreams into creeping at night? sleepwalking toward the river. 26 III Electricity is a lonely thing, drawn to children. 27 Psychopomp Writing down the family is impossible. You?ll never believe me if I say my mother has seen two thousand people die one by one, held their hands seen the cats leave the room following an invisible She?s a minor god a local crossroads witch of death. She knows the old diseases. 28 Insomnia and Her Children The problem with Marsha?s dreams has always been that they are too real. At six she killed Kennedy blew Shirley Temple kisses to missiles. She strung everyone in her hometown on meat hooks, ate their eyes like penny candy, walked her baby sisters to the municipal pool. The problem is she can see it all, even waking. Klansmen beat Tyslon into black sand, addicts steal Daniel?s face with razors, silent cars steal her daughters. At night, the house burns in its empty field and she walks along the cotton mill tracks, covered with crows and teeth, carrying her husband?s hands. 29 Birds in the House I My great-granny killed thousands of birds in her life, sweetly throwing them salty dough. She said a bird in the house meant death in the family. So Mom said it too, even when Granny died in our house and there were no birds. I think they were afraid of her. II There was the dim, female cardinal five years after Granny died slamming frantically at the picture window the stairwell?s high stained glass with a small sound, tok tok? A male bird, brighter red, zoomed past every hour chased her away? 30 she always came back. That was a year before Dad?s first thallium stress test. Made Mom nervous, how bad that bird wanted in the house. Made me sad, how she kept beating her skull on the glass. 31 Witch Ways Mom?s not a great witch like my great-granny. And me-- I?m not anything. Granny could powder a mud-dauber nest and cure a baby?s ass of rash in minutes while Mom was still on hold with the doctor and I was still the one in diapers, allergic to everything but goat?s milk. She grew better plants than any woman and kept ancient black and red dried peppers and matches in a hundred drawers. She could see gnomes, too, which Mom and I can never do? we?re not witches yet, Mom just feels ghosts and sees seconds ahead in time, sees the other side. But I?m blind and blackthumbed. I make small children and animals uncertain when I smile. Even Caroline, the baby, has more magic than me 32 she sees people who aren?t there and talks in her sleep. 33 Nurture I Lost children find the house. Mom and Dad feed them, wash their clothes, make them do homework. They whisper about their real parents, watch the fairy foundlings wither, wonder how to save them. II Mom was always sick as a child-- Nana fed her Karo syrup and tobacco juice. But Granny saved her from fever, dropped her in a giant saucepot of icewater. At five, Mom was raising Nana?s babies? midnight feedings, cloth diapers? They grew up on Tang and mayonnaise sandwiches because she didn?t know any better. Granny sent vegetables when she could. 34 III Granny?s son was dying of phlegm in the windpipe too thick to breathe in, too thick to cough out. She did what you did, back then, grabbed his ankles flung him around in great circles until the death flew out. 35 Dad Quits Smoking Again At the end of summer storms get nasty, the chimes ring and fall? some bucket of dirt with dead stalks rolls down the street and the gutters fill with cold, oily water. It?s lovely and mean the doors are open, your father cusses the cats. The dogs cower in the laundry room and chew the electrical cords. 36 Satellites I Stars fall from the sky sit on our porch once a year, twice a season three times a month. I used to get excited, comets! But they?re only ever passing by. II Some are the kind you feed, seeds in a stone dish on the lawn fresh water in an iron bath? Some bring food, far off skysugar, moonrocks. Some bring babies bright beeping orbiters flying up and down stairs 37 splashing in the tub thrilled by light switches. III They are not frozen metal trash fiery gas in blackness. They?re manmade, the ghosts of legend, the stars of last year. Some have crooked teeth and drive minivans and like to laugh and we put them in the sky because we like it when they return, burning. 38 The House on River Avenue Nobody will believe me. The homestead has ghosts who break all the clocks. When I say time runs like still water like heavy clouds at our house, I mean hours are the same, but nobody notices. The house smells like old leaves and heavy Sunday breakfast? If I ever think of leaving, the afternoon stretches out like melting glass and the sun passes his bright mask to dusk. This is where ladybugs come to die. House geckos cling to windowsills all winter, fossil-grey, dry and soft as leaves, rising like spring. This is the house where dogs live eons and porch cats are reborn endlessly, black and gold black and gold. 39 The house steals my purse, hides my shoes places my keys on a pillow in my old, yellow bedroom. 40 Soul Food We have rotten luck. On just one visit?the AC broke, the host hid us, the busboy tripped, sprayed dishwater, the server dumped Coke into Dad?s lap then punched him. We don?t know why; we tip, we never ask for extras? In another life we must have been apple thieves, or a pack of liars and pickpockets stealing bread from beggars, pies from windowsills. Plague rats. Why else are we paying off debt? Karmic accountants, never wrong, take twenty percent on parties over eight. 41 Parents Old people are fools? build houses from stale bread, wander into underwater forests on their wallowing, rusting horses. They eat fish fat and rose hips and forget to take their glasses off of the stove. They turn children into geese and beggars? welcome them home with tar, coal, gold. Their coffee tastes terrible like tears and socks. Old people wash their hair with yellow soap bought in the Fifties, their knees with baby?s blood. Your parents are always gray in the morning. They hide the silver knives, the trashcan. They play with lettered tiles, and burn peppermints? stave off the dark winter stories their children tell. 42 Ghost in the Machine January is the month when we disappear the sun doesn?t pay the bills ghosts from California call, talk to our machine Not like March, when god remembers and throws dead squirrels at you Not like May when the baby sister calls about a boy when the light changes and you find your yellow sweater. January forgot to write has us on the tip of its tongue. 43 Dog at the End My dog is fifteen and she dreams about the end time. She is going blind: her eyes are like soap, like her breath at six weeks, when I held her in one palm. She has outgrown me. Now she is my grandmother. I put her in the bath, facing east then west for the rinse. It is the end of the world. 44 The New World So far, a bear and a wild cat. I?ve married the bear, named the cat and in spring, perhaps the cat will die. Will return. My daughter, my children they all come: the cats, the bears, by summer. In dreams, the cat is back and children are grown and I am hunting. 45 The Only People Left This is one place where the Trail of Tears began. Sunburn man, my dad, works a circular saw on a beached houseboat above a quarry grown green with soft river grass. It?s June and I don?t know why I?m here. Dad works alone. I sit on a porchrail, sweating, swinging my feet, legs hooked at the ankles. Maybe Mom will bring us lunch. He looks itchy. It?s hot and a thunderstorm is rolling in from the west, making the light bend like green and amethyst glass. Dad?s painting Major Ridge?s house and restoring the ancient boat down by the elbow of the river where the ferry used to run. 46 He works alone. Nobody visits Chieftain?s Museum; nobody thinks about where people go. I don?t know why we?re here. 47 Tiny Fears Bees don?t scare me. They hurt, and I?ve stepped on a few. I have a hole on my nose from the porch bee, too. But bees don?t chase, don?t tease?they mind their wax. They just happen. 48 Mudmen Kate and I made mudmen out of clay and covered them with Elmer?s glue. At night we drew pictures under her back porch, on the rock base of the house? red mud handprints are still there. 49 Cruelty I always gave Caroline the ugly Barbie? Brownie Butt. We laughed at her when she made the doll fly. I told my friend Alexis that the Jackalope was a hoax. She cried, hit me, hoped my face would fall apart. I never let Tyslon and Daniel cheat, so they never beat me. They stole my cards, hid my pieces. I taught my baby sister how to play Monopoly, so they still couldn?t win. I made them all laugh in the car when they had to pee. 50 Daniel and the Awful Dog One day he traded his allowance on the worst dog I?d ever seen. A mean little bullet; she hated water, thunder, and people. He named her Sally, begged our parents to let him love her. She stayed, ate the lattice, bit my visitors. Eight years later, she died of a heart the size of a football. Daniel threw everything he owned into the pool. He screamed at us, shoved Dad, cursed Mom. He never talked to God again. 51 The Case for Shoes The world is lovely. The world is hard. My grandfather?s yard is full of gravel and septic seepage; my parents shipped me here again. I can never take off my shoes. Strange thistles and spiked weeds sit half-hidden in the dust across the street; I smell bleeding, sourgreen walnuts. I am stuck here for a week, so I?m pretending to pick buttercups. Here?s where the dead dog is buried; I liked him. I think about slimy clay underfoot, microscopic worms slipping into my cuts. I don?t want to go inside; I don?t want anyone to see my feet, so I stay out in the wavy heat, throwing sticks from the tar-weeping train trestle into the creek full of arrowheads and hot mud. 52 Miracle Before, when the sun had no edge, nothing was cut from the rest of the world by sharp, invisible lines. Everything was a starburst a nimbus, a halo. One day they gave me glasses and the trees had leaves and I never took the glasses off again. 53 Works Cited Addonizio, Kim and Dorianne Laux. ?The Family: Inspiration and Obstacle.? The Poet?s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997. 30-38. Kane, Sean. Wisdom of the Mythtellers. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1994. Warner, Marina. ?Little Angels, Little Monsters.? Six Myths of Our Time. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. 43-62.