Will Nixon
When I Had It Made
I had loose teeth that became
nickels
under my pillow, a wooden trunk filled
with plastic pirate gear, and a black eye patch
my mother wouldn't let me wear
to second grade. I trapped crickets
in jelly jars and fed them grass blades
until they died and joined
my collection of dried star fish, rocket stamps,
and Canadian pennies. I practiced lassoing
with the laundry line and almost caught
the squirrel my mother hated for running
in the roof gutters whenever
she tried to nap. One day, I crawled
out from my window and climbed
the sandpapery roof shingles
to the crest of the house
where I sat practicing for an unsaddled horse,
and saw things I'd never seen before:
the daisy window for the neighbor's attic
filled with lamps, the green hills
hunched like ants along the horizon
where I bet some Indians still lived.
When the paper boy came, he didn't see me spying,
and didn't know a black lab was racing
around the corner after his pants.
When Dad walked home, whistling
and swinging his briefcase, he didn't see me
almost as high as the crows.
He carried his gin-and-tonic onto the patio
and opened the newspaper to the little league scores
and told my mother in the kitchen
the next library lecture was about robins.
When I grew up, I decided, I would be an angel
who watched people like this all day.
I saw the first star at the end of the blue sky
and didn't come down
until the sunset
put the smallest clouds to sleep.
Dyslexic
The year I learned the hangman's
noose
I tied it everywhere: tire swings, clothes lines,
the drawstrings on the rec room curtains
that hung my pinkie purple during commercials.
The doctor says you only want attention
because of your little brother, Mom said,
cupping her dishpan hands like horse blinders
so she wouldn't see my purple finger, my eyelids folded
inside out like plum skins. My doctor didn't wear
a white coat, didn't depress my tongue
with an extra-wide popsicle stick. In a bow tie
always tilted to the side like a stopped propeller,
he played checkers and asked me easy questions,
like why I felt it necessary to pour dirt
down my brother's underwear. Because I like to,
I said, besides he doesn't care. My doctor never
smiled or frowned when I jumped his pieces,
sometimes three in a row. Do you enjoy pulling
his pants down in public? he asked.
He doesn't care. He's dyslexic. Ask my mom.
And what does dyslexic mean?
It means, I said, he throws a baseball like a girl.
He gets to stay home from school in his bathrobe
because he didn't do his homework. He's fat,
and he'll eat ants if I tell him to.
My doctor suddenly jumped four pieces and chose red
for the next game. I think it means you should be nice
to him, my doctor said. Yeah, I said,
but you're not his brother.
Mad Chemist
In the basement I fought
World War One in the dirt
trenches I shaped by trowel on the pool table
with a short leg.
My metal soldiers survived firecrackers
catapulted by spoons, dive bomb hand attacks
by my little brother, earthquakes from our knees
drumming the table. My father stopped the war
when Rex the cat began pooping in the dirt.
Your mother doesn't want you playing in bacteria.
So I played mad chemist. I wanted to invent acid
for boiling open safes, freezing fluids for ants, worms,
and girls toes. From the brown bottles racked
in my chemistry set, I mixed bad odors and slow fizzles,
but not flames when I dropped matches in the test tubes.
After my brother ratted, my father locked the set in his closet.
Your mother wants you to become a doctor, not a bomb
maker. Think about eating breakfast with no fingers.
I picked his closet with a paper clip and took my chemistry set
to the swamp with a bottle of Mountain Dew to mix my brother
a surprise. This formula would turn his hair blue, soften his teeth
like rubber. I drank my half of the Mountain Dew, then his half,
and held the bottle under spider water, making it gurgle,
when a mucky head rose, a snapping turtle hooked like a claw.
My brother found the chemistry set in the swamp snow,
rusty as an old can with spilled bottles of smelly ice.
My father punished me with no television for polluting
a wetland. He didn't know the secret of the snapping turtle:
sipping chemicals, glowing green, breathing fire.
About the Author
A resident of Phoenicia, Will Nixon has written poetry, personal essays, and environmental journalism. His first poetry chapbook, When I Had It Made, appeared from Pudding House Publications in early in 2001. It's available at www.BarnesandNoble.com . His own web site, www.mycabinfever.com , offers personal essays about his transformation from Manhattan sophisticate to Catskills hermit. His e-mail address is wnixon@ulster.net.