Good Manners Can Be Fun

The admonishment at age 6 was this:

Pull your lower lip in, or an elephant

will come along and step on it.

My grandmother of the always clean,
passing the felt-bottomed collection plate, allowed no pout.

Sadness was for others with less, without silverware to eat.

No picking at the peas or potatoes. My lip and lump

in my throat forbidden, hidden. Stick figures

populating a children’s book. Spine affixed with

silver adhesive tape, a stringy makeshift mend, once belonging

to my father, her most obedient son (Just swallow that ball of

irritable. Good Manners Can Be Fun) I defaced the aging pages,

scribbling my crooked name sloppily in pencil, and then rooted

for the tiny pachyderm in a blue star-less room

Nose-trunk growing like Pinocchio caught in what he wanted

to believe. That he was a real boy. That these elongated faces

make visible sense when we are lonely and no one is listening.

When the forest is full of wonderful screeching monkeys and rhinoceros.

Thick skin and thin.

But, let it be known: I am going to track mud in.

I will pierce this lip with snake bite ties
and trumpet ferociously, without apology.

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